


R O O M S

by AOnceToldStory



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friendship, Mind Games, Moral Dilemmas, Near Death Experiences, Survival Horror, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 08:23:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 29,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12883881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AOnceToldStory/pseuds/AOnceToldStory
Summary: It's all fun and games until someone decides it isn't anymore.The idols of Seventeen wake up one by one, alone and locked up in each their own room, with no clue of how they got there or what they're supposed to do. Lead along with clues and puzzles, the boys are forced to play a game that has far higher stakes than anything they've ever done before. The objective is to escape. The key is to risk just enough to stay alive. Every choice that makes a good show takes them closer to the end.I wrote this story on the Carat Amino app as a Halloween 2017 project, where at the end of each chapter the readers voted on what would happen next. This is the finished piece, all choices already made. I take no responsibility for the heartbreak that might be inflicted on you while reading, or for the choices made by the readers or randomisers.Well, not all of the responsibility anyway.Enjoy.





	1. The Game Starts

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

He is very uncomfortable. That’s the first thing Jeonghan notices when consciousness drags him out of sleep. As he slowly sits up he realises two other things—he’s been sleeping on a cold concrete floor, and he’s very dizzy. It’s like the space he’s in slowly veers one way, then snaps back only to veer off again. As he sits there and waits for the spinning to stop, a heavy feeling hits him. He doesn’t remember falling asleep on any floors. In truth, he doesn’t remember almost anything from the night before. He has a vague memory of Seungcheol and him going out for a run, then nothing. Only blackness, and the concrete floor.

He fumbles around in the dark, his eyes struggling to find something to focus on. He feels along the walls carefully, across what he thinks is a metal door frame. Then his fingers find a light switch and the room is bathed in fluorescent light that burns Jeonghan’s eyes. When he finally adjusts to the brightness, his stomach clenches at what he sees. He’s in a quite large room made entirely of concrete, one wall covered in TV screens and below it a table with hundreds of controls and buttons. There are more tables along the other walls that hold computers and machinery that Jeonghan can’t identify. There are nine chairs but he’s alone in the room. There’s a reinforced metal door behind him and another to his left, and not a single window.

Jeonghan is too confused to be scared. He tries the first door, but there’s no handle and he can’t get his fingers inside the doorframe. The second door has a knob, but it won’t budge no matter how hard he tries.

“Hello? Is anyone out there? Hello?” He knocks on the doors as hard as he can. Nothing happens.

Locked up and starting to panic, Jeonghan looks around the room for anything useful. The computers are plugged in but they won’t start. He tries to open the drawers underneath the tables, but most are either locked or empty. One isn’t, though, and inside he finds a single key. It won’t fit any of the other drawers or the left-hand door. Jeonghan sighs in frustration. What the hell is going on?

Something catches his eye to the left. There’s a small alcove in the wall that Jeonghan thought was just empty, but now he sees that there’s something on the floor. He picks it up and dusts it off—it looks like a handbook. Curious, he opens it, and a piece of paper falls out. It lands face up and he reads it even before he picks it up.

_실수하지마. 모든 시도가 중요해._  
_(Don’t make any mistakes. Every try counts.)_

Nothing else, not even a name. Jeonghan looks through the handbook—first English, then German, Spanish, Chinese…—and thankfully finds a Korean section in it. It seems to belong to the control panel underneath the TV screens, so Jeonghan attempts to follow the start-up instructions. He’s careful about it, and it works. One of the centre screens buzzes to life, a still image from a bad quality camera, but it’s good enough for Jeonghan to see. It’s standing on a table in a small room, and there’s a young man sitting hunched on a chair across from it.

It’s Seokmin. And he’s not moving. On the wall behind him, there’s a TV screen with four numbers on it—60:00. Before Jeonghan’s eyes, the numbers switch to 59:59 and the seconds start ticking away.

It’s a timer. Jeonghan has an hour before... well, he has no idea. And it freaks him out.

* * *

 

**THE LOCKER ROOM**

Sunyeong woke up when the water started to reach his body on the floor. He’d heard the hard knocks on the metal door on the opposite side of the room, but he couldn’t make any noise back. He was locked to a floor drain with a short chain, and gagged so hard it hurt the corners of his mouth. He tried to cry out, to rattle with the chain, but whoever was on the other side couldn’t hear him. Sunyeong hadn’t recognised the voice because it was too muffled, but he has a feeling it might be one of his friends.

He is starting to feel really cold because the water is freezing. He can hear the faucets running full force inside the closed bathroom stalls, and the water floods out underneath the doors. He’s thankful for the drain, or else the room might fill up completely because the door looks almost bunker-like and there are no windows to break.

He struggles again, pulls on the drain cap as hard as he can. The cracking makes it sound like he could break it free, but he’s in a really bad angle. He looks around again for something to help him, but there’s nothing. He’s surrounded by tall changing room lockers, every single one locked with a combination, and the doors have weird, uneven number series scribbled on them.

Sunyeong is growing tired of the panic in his chest. He makes his hands as small as he can and pulls until it hurts. The cuffs are tight but he’s sure he can get out of them if he only ignores the pain. He tries, and slides a little out of them, using the water for less friction. But the metal is breaking his skin and he bites down on the gag when the pain becomes too much. He gives up when tears start to pour from his eyes.

He realises regretfully he’s doing exactly what he should be doing. Blood is slicker than water, so if he can just get his hands covered in it he should be able to get free. Biting down hard on the gag, he starts rubbing his wrists hard against the cuffs until he feels the warm liquid running. When he just can’t stand the pain anymore, he pulls again. It takes all his willpower, but eventually, his hands slide out and he tumbles forward into the water, hitting his head on one of the locker benches. He unties the gag and rubs the sore corners of his mouth, then inspects his wrist injuries. The cuts are shallow but bleeding badly, and sting like nothing he’s ever felt before. He tears the gag in half and uses it to bandage the wounds, then stumbles into the bathroom stalls to turn the water off. He swears out loud when he realises that he can’t because the faucets are broken on purpose. Instead, he goes to the metal door and starts pounding.

“Hey! Someone get me out of here! Are you still there? Can you hear me!”

Sunyeong hears a dull thud on the other side, and then the very muffled voice. This time he can make out that it must be Jeonghan.

“Sunyeong-ah! Sunyeong-ah! Is that you in there?”

“Yes!” Sunyeong calls back. “Open the door!”

“I can’t, it’s locked!”

Great, he thinks. “Are you okay, hyung? What is going on? Where are we?”

“I’m alright!” Jeonghan yells through the door. “I’m in some kind of control room, there are screens and I pressed some buttons and now I can see Seokmin on one of them! He’s not moving, and there’s some clock behind him that’s counting down and I don’t know what to do!”

“A timer?” Sunyeong’s heart sinks. “Is there anything else?”

“Not that I can see! Wait, is there a camera in there with you?”

Sunyeong looks around for the first time since he could stand up. The room is large with several rows of lockers, and in one corner he finds what Jeonghan must have meant—a small TV screen on the wall with some kind of webcam on top. Sunyeong feels it down until he finds a button and turns the TV on. The text ‘Locker Room’ flashes by quickly, then there’s a noise like feedback from a microphone and a timer just like the one behind Seokmin appears on the TV.

Jeonghan pounds on the door again and calls Sunyeong’s name, but this time his voice comes through hidden speakers clearly.

“Hey, hyung, don’t yell, I think I did something!”

“Right back at you,” Jeonghan said. “I can hear you too. And I can see you. Is that… water on the floor?”

“Yeah, I can’t turn it off. The timer, hyung. I found a TV and it’s on my screen too. Fifty-four seconds left.”

“It’s the same on Seokmin’s… wait, did you say seconds?”

“Yes? It’s forty-five now.”

With both their hearts beating out of their chests, they wait until the timer runs out. Sunyeong has a dozen scenarios playing in his head about what would happen, like a bomb or something, but when the numbers all hit zero, only a small click can be heard and one of the lockers behind Sunyeong opens. Carefully he looks inside—there is a key lying on a shelf, and a note.

_한 • 훈 • 희 • 규 • 관 • 승 • 수 • 순 • 솔 • 석 • 지 • 정 • 준 • 철 • 찬 • 민 • 우 • 영 • 원_  
_(Han • Hun • Hui • Gyu • Gwan • Seung • Soo • Sun • Sol • Seok • Ji • Jeong • Jun • Cheol • Chan • Min • Woo • Yeong • Won)_

Sunyeong stares at the note for a long while—it isn’t hard to see that the syllables are just the names of him and his friends scrambled together, but why? It’s by chance that he closes the door of the locker and sees what’s written on the front. 8 and 18. The numbers of the syllables of his name in the order they’re written on the note.

“Jeonghan-hyung, I think these lockers are marked with our names.” He walks around, checks the numbers on the lockers. 12 and 1, Jeonghan. 19 and 17, Wonwoo. 1 and 9, Hansol. “Should I try to open one? They’re all locked with combinations.”

Before Jeonghan can answer, Sunyeong reaches for the combination lock on the door marked with Hansol’s name. It’s right beside the one marked Jeonghan. The numbers on the locks are randomised, and there’s a button to press when you think you have the right code. Sunyeong hesitates.

* * *

 

SHOULD SUNYEONG TRY TO OPEN HANSOL'S LOCKER

or

**SHOULD HE TRY TO OPEN JEONGHAN'S LOCKER?**

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_


	2. The Keys Are Important

**THE LOCKER ROOM**

Simply because it is only Jeonghan he can talk to at the moment, Sunyeong chooses to try the locker that belongs to his hyung. Since the lock requires four numbers, he goes with the most obvious option. He turns the wheels until they say 1004—October 4th, Jeonghan’s birthday—and presses the little button on the side. At first, nothing happens, then suddenly a loud pang sounds over the speakers and Jeonghan cries out.

“Hyung, what happened?” Sunyeong calls in fear.

“Oh my g..! One of the drawers… It exploded!”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m across the room. It’s smoking now, but I don’t… I don’t think it’s burning.” He’s silent for a moment. “Sunyeong-ah, did you do something? You said you’d try one of the locks…”

“Yeah, why?” Sunyeong asks carefully. “Wait, you don’t think..?”

“I got this note before, it says ‘Don’t make mistakes. Every try counts’ and I thought of it now. What code did you try?”

“Your birthday, it didn’t work. It’s four numbers, I don’t know.”

Without actually trying them, they list some combinations that can be correct, including the name code numbers on the locker door, his birthday but the other way around, various parts of his phone number. They also realise that it can be just a random number too, and that’s the worst scenario.

Sunyeong hears Jeonghan move something heavy. “Sunyeong-ah, I think I can get this drawer open. The exploded one.”

“Be careful,” Sunyeong says. The sounds of Jeonghan struggling and metal screeching against metal fill the Locker Room. Sunyeong sits down on the bench and pulls his feet out of the cold water still running over the floor. Then something breaks over the speakers and Jeonghan makes a celebratory noise.

“There was another note in the exploded drawer, I can hardly see what it says…hmm… I can see ‘Seung’. You think it’s supposed to say Seungcheol?”

“Or Seungkwan,” Sunyeong adds thoughtfully.

Jeonghan takes a long while to think. Meanwhile, Sunyeong connects the dots—maybe the note is the password for the locks. It doesn’t make sense that the lockers would have someone else’s name as a code, but nothing else makes sense in here either.

“Sunyeong-ah, I think the note said Seungcheol.” Sunyeong explains his theory about the codes and looks up their oldest member’s name on the syllable list he got. 6 and 14. Jeonghan seems confident. “Try it. I’ll stand as far away from the drawers as I can.”

Sunyeong puts in the numbers, 0614, then hesitates. Holding his breath, he presses the side button. To his great relief, nothing explodes. The lock opens easily and Sunyeong looks inside the locker. It’s empty, but there’s a message scribbled across the back wall.

_승철이 거의 모든 문을 열 수 있지만 승철의 문을 만 너는 열 수 있어._   
_(Seungcheol can open almost any door, but only you can open Seungcheol’s door.)_

Disheartened and confused, he reads the message aloud to Jeonghan. His older doesn’t understand it much better. In each their own room, they sit down and do the only thing they can—nothing. Jeonghan says that Seokmin still hasn’t moved on his screen and the countdown is on thirty-eight minutes. Sunyeong walks around the dryer areas of the floor for warmth in the chilly Locker Room. He finds the door marked 6 and 14, Seungcheol’s locker. Of course Sunyeong was the only one who would open it, he was alone in a locked room. But then he notices something he had seen before—this lock isn’t a combination one, it requires an ordinary key. Sunyeong thinks of the key he got from his own locker and fetches it. When he does he can see that the countdown on his TV screen has reset, and is reading just under ten minutes time. He doesn’t mind that.

He’s sure that he has figured the puzzle out when he grabs the lock on Seungcheol’s door and is about to insert the key. That’s when he sees the tiny inscription on the front of the lock itself.

_낭비하지마._   
_(Don’t waste it.)_

* * *

 

**THE CORRIDOR**

Seungcheol is finally beginning to calm down for real. He woke up about an hour ago to the bright fluorescent lights of the long hallway, alone and sitting up against a wall. He’d panicked when he felt the collar around his neck, a thick metal beam that curves around his throat and attaches to the walls on either side. The panic had been fuelled by what is in front of him—a touchpad leaned to the opposite wall, with a countdown that says nine minutes now, and messages that scroll across the screen.

_고리는 폭탄있어. 친구가 널 구할 수 있어. 신뢰해._   
_(The ring is a bomb. Your friends can save you. Trust them.)_

It hasn’t happened once since he met them that Seungcheol didn’t trust his friends. But now he is alone, without means to contact them or any clue about what their situations look like. They could be in just as much trouble as he is. He’d tried to break the ring loose from the wall, but it’s impossible. It can’t be moved even a sliver.

Now that his heart isn’t trying to escape from his body anymore, Seungcheol can take in a few more details about his surroundings. The corridor he’s in comes to an end about three meters to one side. It stretches far in the other direction and then turns right. There’s one door in the wall he is sitting against, one far away in the corner, three on the opposite wall and one right next to him. The closest one has a sign that says ‘The Butcher Room’. The three on the other wall says ‘The Bedroom’, ‘The Boiler Room’ and ‘The Classroom’. He can’t read what the fifth and sixth doors say.

As if the random names aren’t scary enough, Seungcheol has no memory of how he got here. The ever decreasing number of minutes on the countdown doesn’t help either. Someone has to do something fast, or Seungcheol doesn’t know what will happen to him. In a fit of rage, he tries to pull free from the collar again, but it’s useless. he tries screaming again like he did when he woke up, but it only makes his throat raw and nobody hears him anyway. Every door he can see is made of reinforced steel—he doesn’t think much sound can penetrate them.

Suddenly Seungcheol’s ears react to something. He quiets down and listens carefully, and at first, he thinks he’s imagining it. But the more he listens, the more certain he becomes. He can hear breathing that isn’t his own. It sounds weird, almost as if through a phone, but it’s definitely breathing.

He can’t see it because of the angle, but there’s a small speaker on the wall above his head and a microphone. Seungcheol’s screaming has woken someone up, and now Seungcheol can hear them moving and groaning.

“Who’s there?” Seungcheol asks loudly, thinking that the noise is coming from further down the corridor. “Can you hear me?”

More groaning, almost painful, then a newly awake voice comes through the speakers. “Hello?”

Seungcheol doesn’t immediately recognise the voice, it’s too low. But he becomes excited at hearing someone else for the first time. “Hello? Who’s there?”

“Hyung, is that you? Seungcheol-hyung?” the voice says tiredly.

Now Seungcheol can hear clearly who it is. His heart skips a beat at the first sign of one of his friends. It’s Lee Chan. In all the inexplicable horrors that Seungcheol is surrounded by, he feels a little extra happy to know that at least his youngest friend is okay.

His happiness is short-lived.

“Hyung, where are you? I think I’m bleeding. Help me.”

* * *

SHOULD SUNYEONG USE HIS KEY TO OPEN SEUNGCHEOL'S LOCKER

_or_

**SHOULD HE SAVE IT AND WAIT FOR THE COUNTDOWN TO FINISH?**

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	3. Someone Might Drown

**THE CORRIDOR**

As Seungcheol does his best to try and get some information out of Chan and keep him calm, the older is also battling his own growing anxiety. The countdown on the touchpad in front of him won’t stop ticking—seven minutes, six minutes, five. Some deep down part of him has already accepted that he can’t get out of the collar, so he does the only thing that makes any sense, which is talking to Chan. So far it’s been nearly fruitless. His younger is in a large, dark bunker-like place, filled with metal tables, chains and hooks, knives and hatches. It doesn’t take Seungcheol long to figure out that Chan must be in the Butcher Room behind him, like the door on his right says. But the worst part is that Chan’s leg is injured, and from his description of the wound it seems bad.

“It there anything in there you can use as bandages?” Seungcheol continues. “Maybe you can rip your own shirt.”

“Maybe,” Chan replies. His voice is still weak, almost drugged. Makes sense that they would be drugged—how else did the maniac who locked them up transport them all here without them waking up?

Fabric is tearing and Chan grunts with the struggle. Seungcheol swallows as the countdown hits three minutes. Does he have that little time left to live? He fights against the collar again, to no avail. He hasn’t told Chan about the countdown yet, and he doesn’t plan to. What use would it be apart from scaring his younger? None.

“It might stop the bleeding for a little while,” Chan sighs. “I’mma try to get to the door.”

“No!” Seungcheol calls before he can stop himself. “Keep away from that wall, go to the other side, as far away as you can.”

“Why? Hyung?”

“Just listen to me.” One minute left. A single minute. “Quickly.”

“Okay, okay, but what’s going on?”

Seungcheol swallows hard. Thirty seconds. If he wants to say something, this might be his last chance to do so. “Channie, if I stop talking in a few seconds, just keep pressure on your wound and focus on not bleeding out. Someone will come along and help you, alright?”

“Wait, what? What’s going on? Hyung!” He has scared the younger now, like he knew he would. He swears inward.

Eight, seven, six. Seungcheol closes his eyes, prepares for the worst. Five, four, three. Chan keeps screaming, desperate to hear his hyung call back. Two, one, zero.

* * *

**THE MIRROR ROOM**

It’s the bright lights that eventually wake Seungkwan up. He blinks hard until his eyes adjust, then slowly starts to register different things with his other senses—the lack of clothes on his body, the stickiness of bare skin on a parquet floor, a familiar smell he can’t place.

The second he realises that he’s somewhere he should be, Seungkwan flies up on his feet and looks around. Shivers go up his spine, sends his mind into overdrive. Everywhere he looks he can only see his own naked body and frightened face. Mirrors. Every single wall in the large room is covered in mirrors. The ceiling too, he quickly figures out. He hurries to cover himself, but there’s nobody else in the room.

“Hello? Anyone here?” he asks into thin air. No answer.

There’s a door, strangely reinforced and strong, that won’t open when he pulls on it or pushes. There’s no doorknob either.

Confused and scared out of his wits, he looks around again. There’s a table standing at the far end of the room, and there’s a row of something shiny on top of it. Seungkwan walks over to see what it is and-

Boom! He walks straight into something invisible. The glass is so spotless that he can’t see it even when he knows it’s there. It cuts the room in half perfectly, and it confuses Seungkwan even more. When he looks to the table now he can see that there’s a row of empty wine glasses on it, and tiny notes in front of each one. It’s hard to read because it’s so small, but he can do it. Each note has the name of one of his friends on it, twelve in total.

There’s also a sign standing underneath the table, a little bigger with thicker text on it. A single word.

 _소리쳐._  
_(Scream.)_

Seungkwan has never felt this hopeless in his life.

* * *

 

**THE CORRIDOR**

The countdown freezes on four zeros then flashes and disappears. When nothing happens, Seungcheol opens his eyes again, heart beating so loud he could have sworn it lives inside his ears. A new text covers the touch pad briefly before it goes black.

 _너의 신뢰가 잘못 놓여 있었어._  
_(Your trust was misplaced.)_

Seungcheol waits for the now empty, black screen to do something else, but it doesn’t. Was he just mock executed? The collar is still on, and impossible to get out of. When Chan starts screaming his name again, he snaps back to reality.

“I’m still here, Chan. I’m okay.”

“What was that? What did you do?” Seungcheol explained, and Chan’s voice rose at least an octave. “How could you not tell me that!?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to scare you.”

Seungcheol is so busy breathing and feeling alive that he hardly notices the screen has come alive again. Three lines of text flash by, but Seungcheol manages to catch them all.

 _친구들이 대신 널 신뢰해야 할 때있어. 찬이 친구 중 하나를 저장할 수 있어. 결정해._  
_(It’s time for your friends to trust you instead. Chan can save one of them. Decide.)_

He barely has time to register shock at what he reads before the screen switches to a split image view, with two different cameras playing what looks like live footage to him. One is of a place that looks like a changing room, and there’s a person walking around with water splashing around their feet. The second is an almost still image of a bare room, empty of all but a bathtub with what looks like a person lying inside. Seungcheol squints at the two video feeds—he’s pretty sure it’s Sunyeong running around the changing room, and the person in the bathtub looks like…

Is that Jun? he thinks. It must be. Seungcheol’s heart aches at the sight of his two friends. What kind of crazy person would do this? Is he supposed to choose between them? And what will happen to the one he doesn’t decide to save?

‘Decide’ flashes across the screen again, then back to the live feed. This time there’s a new countdown at the bottom of the screen, starting from ten minutes. At first Seungcheol only freezes, both mind and body. Then he sees that something is happening on Sunyeong’s side—something like a waterfall has started to come down from the ceiling, and Sunyeong runs around it in panic. Seungcheol’s heart contracts. Is the room filling with water? He looks over to Jun’s side, and the threat is confirmed. The tap at the head of the bathtub is running, very slowly filling the bathtub with water.

If Jun doesn’t wake up, he’ll drown. Seungcheol realises that Sunyeong can likely drown too, if the room fills up completely. Seungcheol’s panic begins anew, and he does his best to keep it at bay. Almost on instinct, his voice becomes loud and clear.

“Chan, listen very carefully to me. Whoever put us here has given me some instructions. I need you to help me. What can you see more than what you’ve told me? Is there nothing on the tables or the walls?”

Chan moves, dragging his injured leg behind him with much effort. Seungcheol hears his shuffling, biting down on his tongue in concentration while watching the two live feeds on the touch pad.

“I found something,” Chan says. “It’s… it’s a skull, hyung. A human skull.”

“Uhm, okay. Anything else?”

“There’s a key too, like, made from clay or something. It’s very fragile. Hold on…”

“What?” Seungcheol doesn’t like the tone Chan is having.

“I didn’t see it at first. There’s a note here, on the wall… ‘ _Sunyeong needs his Head to survive. Smash the head to save the Heart. The key goes to Junhui’s Heart. Smash the Heart to save the Head_.’ What does that mean, hyung?”

Instructions. The touch pad said Chan can save one of them. This is how he was going to do it, by smashing one object to save the other. And Seungcheol is supposed to tell him which one to spare.

The countdown reads five minutes. Seungcheol can clearly see water starting to close in on an unconscious Jun’s face in the bathtub, and Sunyeong is standing on one of the locker benches with water up to his knees.

Seungcheol swallows so hard his Adams apple scrapes against the metal collar. He has to think fast—it doesn’t feel like the situation is fake this time.

* * *

SHOULD CHAN SMASH THE SKULL?

_or_

**SHOULD HE SMASH THE KEY?**

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_


	4. Minghao Knows

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

It’s horrible to watch without being able to do anything. Jeonghan’s eyes dart between the now three screens that are live on the wall in front of him—Seokmin still unmoving on his chair, countdown passing twenty minutes; Sunyeong in the room next door, water reaching his hips and trying to climb on top of the lockers; and Junhui unconscious in a bathtub also filling with water, unresponsive to Jeonghan’s desperate calls.

And worst of all, the text flashing across Sunyeong and Junhui’s screens:

_승철의 결정을 기다리고 있기._   
_(Awaiting Seungcheol’s decision.)_

Is Seungcheol in a room somewhere too? Is he supposed to choose who to save? It‘s obvious that they will drown if the water doesn’t stop.

“Damn, the water’s cold!” Sunyeong swears from inside the Locker Room.

“Just hang in there,” Jeonghan says with a heavy heart. Right then, the flashing text on the screens changes.

_결정이 접수되었기._   
_(Decision received.)_

The text vanishes altogether, and a metallic scraping sound can be heard through the walls. The waterfall from Sunyeong’s ceiling stops, and a small whirlpool appears when the drain in the floor opens again. Hearing Sunyeong’s celebratory calls, Jeonghan looks over to Junhui’s screen. To his horror, the tap doesn’t stop running. The water is seconds from covering Junhui’s mouth when the live feed ends and he’s left with a black screen.

Jeonghan doesn’t know what to feel. His heart is beating like crazy, brain struggling for a solution. Is Junhui drowning right now so that Sunyeong can be safe? What situation is Seungcheol in to be able to make such a decision? When he tells Sunyeong what he saw, the younger is speechless and horrified.

After a long while of silence and terrible mental images of Junhui in that bathtub, a popping noise scares Jeonghan so bad he jumps and hits his hip on a table corner. He swirls around to look and sees nothing out of the ordinary.

“Why’d you scream?” Sunyeong asks.

“I heard a noise...” Then he notices what must’ve happened. “One of the drawers! It opened just now.”

He walks over and pulls the previously locked drawer out—there’s another handbook inside. When he opens the book he finds a note very similar to the one before.

_통신은 핵심있어._   
_(Communication is the key.)_

Although he’s furious that they are being toyed with like this, Jeonghan sees no other option but to play along. He skims through the handbook to the Korean section and finds that it is instructions on how to operate another part of the huge control panel. Jeonghan walks over, carefully reading and identifying the different buttons and knobs. He follows the steps which are supposed to turn on the communications system, and to his big surprise, all of the screens suddenly come to life. He can only see Sunyeong and Seokmin’s live feeds still, the rest are black screens with names on them.

Twelve screens. Two feeds and ten names. But one of the names is Jeonghan’s own. He goes through them all and finds that Minghao’s name is missing. Why of all people is Minghao not up there with the rest? Does that mean he isn’t part of this cruel game of terror? Somehow Jeonghan doubts that he’s safe, and it hurts his heart more than he can describe.

“The water’s all gone now,” Sunyeong says with a sigh of relief. “What’s going on in your room? Anything on Jun?”

He explains to Sunyeong about the screens, who suggests there might be a way to activate the same kind of surveillance system in the other rooms as in Sunyeong and Seokmin’s. Jeonghan continues the step-by-step guide that woke the screens up and finds which buttons to press.

A much smaller screen set into the control panel lights up, and there’s a menu on it titled ‘Communications System’. The options are ‘Activate’, ‘Reboot’, ‘Management’ and ‘Power Down’. Feeling like he’s getting somewhere finally, Jeonghan selects ‘Activate’, and a new list of options appears.

_–Corridor–_

_–Bathroom–_

_–Interrogation Room–_

_–Select area to Activate–_

Jeonghan doesn’t know what any of these things mean, although he has a clue since they all seem to be locked in different rooms. A dreadful feeling hits him. Is it his turn to choose now? Will he only get to choose one? He thinks of Junhui in the bathtub, of the countdown behind Seokmin that’s still ticking away fast.

He has to pick one.

* * *

 

**THE SMALL ROOM**

At first, Minghao thought that he’d been buried alive. He’d almost had a heart attack when he woke up, screaming and crying and thrashing around to no use. The space he’s in is only a little bigger than a coffin and seems to be made of stone slabs. It‘s absolutely impossible to move the walls. His throat feels like it’s in tatters from the yelling, his eyes are swollen and his back hurts from lying down on the hard surface. He turns to his side and hugs himself. He doesn’t want to look at the ceiling of his tiny space anymore, or the words that seem to be written in blood into the stone:

_친구의 실수에 대해 지불 할 거야. 공정하네?_   
_(You’ll pay for your friends’ mistakes. That’s fair, right?)_

So far the side walls have already moved in on him twice, about a centimetre both times. Minghao dreads that whatever his friends are currently doing, if they do it wrong, eventually the walls will crush him. It’s so horrible that he can’t even imagine it happening.

Do his friends know where he is? Do they know that their mistakes can cost him his life soon? Minghao can only hope, and he does.

He’s hateful. So filled with rage that it makes the small space seem warmer than it is. He knows where they are, and the reason why they are being forced to play this game. Because that’s what it is—a stupid, heartless game. Unlike his friends who were unconscious when they were brought here, Minghao remembers everything about the kidnapping and the Horror House before being drugged and put in here.

Unlike his friends, Minghao knows that there’s a big chance most of them won’t make it out of here alive.

* * *

SHOULD JEONGHAN ACTIVATE THE COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM FOR

THE CORRIDOR

_or_

**THE BATHROOM**

_or_

THE INTERROGATION ROOM?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	5. Someone Might Die

**THE BATHROOM**

_“Jun! Jun-ah! Jun-ah!”_

There is water, confinement, a struggle. He is pretty sure that the last thing he clearly remembers is hopping in the shower. But he also remembers being dragged out of there, getting hit and kicked. But then why is he still breathing water?

_“Jun-ah, get up!”_

It’s Minghao that’s calling on him, scared but determined. He’s sure of it. The lack of honorifics doesn’t strike him until he’s almost at the surface of consciousness, and the voice of Minghao from his memories starts fading into the true sounds of whoever’s yelling his name now.

“Jun-ah, please get up!”

Junhui isn’t even fully awake when his body spasms to life and moves on instinct. He takes a desperate breath as he sits up, then immediately starts coughing the water from his lungs. The water in the bathtub splashes onto the floor, and the tap stops running before he can notice.

“Oh my god, Jun, are you okay?” It’s Jeonghan’s voice, and Junhui is confused. “Talk to me!”

Junhui finds himself alone in a small, dim lit room with a steel door, no windows and a single light bulb hanging over the bathtub. Jeonghan is nowhere in sight. But when his hyung talks again, the quality of the sound reveals the use of speakers.

“You scared us, Jun. You okay?”

“What’s going on, hyung?” This time it is Sunyeong’s voice.

“He’s alive, just wait a moment,” Jeonghan replies.

It takes more than a moment for Junhui to finish coughing and regain his senses. When he finally does, the first thing he reacts to isn’t even close to what Jeonghan expects.

“Why am I wearing clothes? I guess it’s pretty awkward to kidnap a naked person...”

Jeonghan can’t stop himself from giving a relieved laugh. Junhui smiles with water dripping from his fringe, thankful to be alive. Then he slowly realizes the situation they’re in, and his smile and heart sink.

“Hyung, what happened to us?”

Jeonghan explains, and Sunyeong cuts in where it is helpful. Their rooms, the screens and keys and locker codes, the unconscious Seokmin, Seungcheol’s choice, Junhui’s near drowning. Junhui almost wants to tell them to shut up, it’s too much to process. He gets out of the bathtub and tries his door.

“My door is locked too,” he tells his friends. “Do you think there might be someone else on the other side?”

“Hyung and I have adjacent rooms,” Sunyeong says. Junhui tries banging on the door and calls out, but nobody answers him. “By the way, Jun, is there anything else in there with you? Like notes, codes... a key?”

“A key..?” The instant he says it, Junhui realizes that there’s something hanging around his neck. A chain, with an old-looking key attached to it. “Found it. There’s something engraved on it, wait... okay? It says ‘ _Wonwoo_ ’ on it.”

Sunyeong sounds excited when he asks if Junhui is sure. “Wait,” he says, then fumbles with something metallic. “Brace yourselves... yes! It worked!”

“What?” Junhui asks.

“The lockers in here need our names, but in numbers, to unlock and everyone has their own name and... never mind, your code was ‘Wonwoo’. Let’s see here... well, this gets more and more confusing by the second.”

* * *

 

**THE LOCKER ROOM**

Sunyeong doesn’t know how to describe what’s in Junhui’s locker other than like a thermostat. There’s a display that tells the temperature, which is currently at 10 degrees Celsius, and a few buttons to control it. There’s also a note that he reads aloud to Jeonghan and Junhui.

_조금 가열하자._   
_(Let’s heat things up a little.)_

“What do you think it means, guys?” Sunyeong asks. His heart feels heavy, still a little guilty about what happened with Junhui earlier.

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan replies with a sigh. “But I have a bad feeling about it. I can’t get my note out of my head.”

Neither can Sunyeong. ‘Don’t make mistakes’. He wonders if the mistake here is to ignore the command or to follow it.

* * *

 

**THE BOILER ROOM**

Jisoo has never been sweating this much in his entire life. Through years of workouts and dancing—never like this. It pours down his back, soaks his hair and his T-shirt. His hands stick to the stone floor. Ironically, while his outsides are wet, his mouth and throat are bone dry.

He’s starting to accept that the heat might kill him if he can’t escape. But the door is locked and too hot to touch, and there’s no water to quench his thirst. The only thing that calms him down is the fact that he’s not alone—well, technically he is, but he’s not in a position to complain.

“How’re you doing, Wonwoo-ya?”

Wonwoo takes a long while to answer. Jisoo is used to it by now. It scares the living hell out of him, but it’s highly likely that Wonwoo will die before him. When Wonwoo’s voice comes through the speakers, it’s weak and shivering.

“I’m still here... It’s so cold... so cold...”

“You wanna switch?” Jisoo jokes for the second time. Wonwoo’s laugh is barely audible, and Jisoo’s is dry and raspy. “I’d do anything for some ice right now.”

His humour is only a mask at this point. They’re both too tired, too spent. It’s just a matter of time before one of them falls asleep and doesn’t wake up again. Jisoo looks with hateful eyes at the key on the floor further away, and the note attached to it. The note that says that the only way to save himself is to kill Wonwoo. Jisoo has torn the note in half.

He lays down and closes his eyes. Just for a little while. There’s nothing more he can do in here. It’s a large room filled with big, steaming hot boiler tanks, dozens of pipes and locked power boxes. If his only chance of survival is killing his friend, he’ll gladly die first. But as more time passes, the chances grow that Wonwoo might die anyway.

Jisoo is determined not to let that happen. “Do you think the others are okay? Or are they struggling like us?”

No reply. Unsurprising.

“I hope they’re okay...” Jisoo draws a heavy, dry breath. “If they are, they better be working their asses off to get us out of here.”

Still no answer. First Jisoo starts to worry, but the pure panic hits him so fast it practically knocks him backwards.

“Wonwoo? Wonwoo!”

He screams for several minutes, but his friend doesn’t answer. Eventually, he just can’t anymore. There’s not enough water in his body to cry either. He collapses on the floor, the heat stealing life from him by the second. He wonders how long it’ll be before he joins Wonwoo in death and if there ever was a chance for either of them to live in the first place.

* * *

**SHOULD SUNYEONG RAISE THE TEMPERATURE**

_or_

SHOULD HE LEAVE IT BE?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 

 


	6. Seungkwan Must Choose

**THE FREEZER ROOM**

If there is a stage between life and death where you are no closer to one or the other, that’s where Wonwoo is now. Jisoo cries his name, but he can’t hear it. The cries stop, but he’s not aware of it. When the air vents suddenly stop blowing, he doesn’t notice, nor when they turn back on. If someone finds him now, they’ll believe he’s long gone.

Then, slowly, warmer air starts to fill the space, and it brings life back to Wonwoo’s body. The floors and walls heat up too. By the time he wakes up again, sacked on the floor and spasming from the residing hypothermia, the countdown in Seokmin’s room has already ended.

* * *

 

**THE MUSIC ROOM**

Jihun waits patiently. He’s been watching Seokmin through the large window for an hour, following the instructions he’s given to save his younger. Now the countdown behind his unconscious friend is about to end, and Jihun looks at it with hateful anticipation. Will his efforts be enough?

The clock hits zero. The awaited electric shock runs through the chair, and Seokmin goes from dead still to thrashing violently in an instant. The shock is only a second or two long, but it feels like an eternity to Jihun. When it finally ends, Seokmin falls limply to the floor. Jihun is terrified, puts his hands on the glass and pounds at it.

“Seokmin-ah! No!”

The instructions written on the ceiling says he had to crack a code and sing it in notes to lower the voltage in Seokmin’s chair. Too high and the shock would fry him, too low and it wouldn’t wake him up. If he doesn’t wake up, a poison in his body will continue to spread unstopped by his immune system.

Jihun had figured the code out and sung for all he was worth until his vocal chords were shredded. Now it seems it was all in vain.

“Seokmin-ah! Seokmin-ah!” He slams his fists on the glass so hard it hurts. “Wake up! Please!”

Seokmin moves. His shoulders tense and he raises his head sluggishly. Jihun starts laughing in pure relief, beats the glass again. His friend seems to react to the noise, but something’s wrong. While Jihun can see him clearly, Seokmin’s eyes move as if his older wasn’t standing there at all. Jihun slams his fists against the barrier over and over, without pause, until the confused Seokmin struggles onto his feet and stumbles over to him. Their eyes never meet. When Seokmin starts feeling across the glass and carefully knocks, Jihun realizes that it’s a one-way window.

“Seokmin-ah, can you hear me?” he calls as loud as his voice can handle—it’s not much and not enough. Seokmin continues looking at the glass cluelessly, still drunk on the drugs given to keep him sedated. His lips move but Jihun can’t hear him either.

This continues for another hour, during which Seokmin does various things to try and escape with the limited energy he has, including trying to break the glass by throwing the chair at it. Jihun sits on the floor of his room and watches him pace sadly, thinking about their other friends and where they could be. Eventually, Seokmin lies down on the floor, too tired to continue fighting.

Because of his inactivity, it takes Jihun a long time to notice that the screen in Seokmin’s room has a new message on it.

_동생은 아직도 죽어 가고있어. 구해줘._   
_(Your little brother is still dying. Save him.)_

His heart contracts. The poison. Is that why Seokmin is so tired? Because he’s still dying? Jihun has no idea what he’s supposed to do, but he starts looking desperately through the room for anything—inside the piano, under the chairs, in the cabinets filled with sheet music. Then he looks inside the body of a guitar and sees something. Unable to reach it, he slams the instrument onto the floor until the wood breaks.

A syringe falls out, with Seokmin’s name on it. Jihun is once again left hopeless—they’re still in separate rooms. How will he get the medicine to his friend? He looks at Seokmin through the window. The younger has seen the message on the screen too now and is holding something in his hand that Jihun can’t see.

The screen flashes. The message vanishes and is replaced by a new countdown, which reads ten minutes and starts ticking.

* * *

 

**THE MIRROR ROOM**

The whole situation is stressing him out more than he can handle. The voice in the speakers is loud and echoes in the bare room, relentlessly telling him how much time he has left.

“Nine minutes and ten seconds. Nine minutes and five seconds. Nine minutes. Eight minutes and fifty-five seconds.”

Seungkwan is sitting on the floor in a corner, holding a hand over a wound on his thigh. There are shards of a shattered mirror all over the floor, three of them bloody since Seungkwan had to pull them out of his body. He’d done what he was told. He’d screamed, and the mirror had exploded right next to him. Behind it was a bathrobe and a note, a note that Seungkwan is reading now.

_한솔을 구하기 위해 한솔의 유리를 산산이 부수야 되. 석민을 구하기 위해 지훈의 유리를 산산이 부수야 되. 기회가 하나 있어._   
_(To save Hansol, Hansol’s glass must shatter. To save Seokmin, Jihun’s glass must shatter. You have one chance.)_

The countdown continues. Although Seungkwan understands what he’s supposed to do—there’s also notes associated with each name on the back of the note—he’s afraid. What if more mirrors explode? A shard can hit him in the eye and he can go blind. The last explosion wasn’t so bad, but it still pushed him off his feet.

He stands up and walks over to the glass barrier. He looks at the glasses lined up so perfectly. How can he possibly choose one of his friends over another? But if he refuses to choose, won’t that mean both of them are harmed? He has watched enough movies to know that it was true.

Hansol. Seokmin and Jihun. There’s everyone else too, with their own notes and glasses. Are they in danger too?

Seungkwan can’t decide. Tears form in his eyes, made from fright and frustration. The voice in the speakers tells him there are five minutes left.

* * *

 

**THE BEDROOM**

The banging on the door has stopped, and Hansol is terrified that he missed his chance to get help from whoever is in the next room. He tried to call out, but the leather gag is too tight. He can’t get up from the bed because of the chains, secured tightly around both his feet, his chest and his neck. That his hands are free doesn’t help, because there’s no way he can break the chains off with only his arm strength, and the leather gag won’t come off either.

He focuses on sucking his stomach in so that the scythe swinging back and forth from the ceiling doesn’t cut him again. But the more time that passes, the further down the scythe seems to go. Blood runs in a small tendril down Hansol’s waist—the wound isn’t deep, but it hurts. If he can’t get out, he’s sure the blade will cut him in half eventually.

He screams through the gag again. He hits his clenched fists against the headboard of the bed, but nobody can hear him through the steel doors. The scythe moves down again, a tiny sliver but it’s enough. It cuts his skin and tortures him.

The banging on his door starts again, this time much louder. Hansol can swear there’s someone yelling too. He concentrates on the sound, tries to isolate it. It could be Junhui. He thinks it’s Junhui.

The scythe moves down again.

* * *

**SHOULD SEUNGKWAN SHATTER HANSOL'S GLASS**

_or_

SHOULD HE SHATTER JIHUN'S GLASS?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	7. A Life Is On The Line

**THE MIRROR ROOM**

He screams. It’s a note, but you couldn’t call the noise singing. He keeps it going, as loud as he can for as long as he can. His face is turning pale when Hansol’s glass starts to vibrate on the table.

Seungkwan ducks and protects his head with his arms when suddenly an explosion sounds and mirror pieces come flying at him from every direction. He falls to the floor, feels as the pieces land on him and cut his hands and exposed feet. When it ends and he looks up, Hansol’s glass is destroyed and three more mirrors are missing—two on his side of the barrier, and one behind the table on the other side. A second door has been revealed behind the table, just as heavy-looking as the one he can reach. There is also a message on the wall where the other two mirrors were before.

_잘 했어. 지금부터 더 어려워 질 거야._   
_(Well done. From now on it will get harder.)_

Somewhere that Seungkwan doesn’t know about, the walls of Minghao’s tiny space move closer again.

* * *

 

**THE BEDROOM**

Hansol doesn’t get the chance to cover his face when a glass panel on the ceiling shatters and the pieces rain down over him. One gets in his eye and his hand flies up from the discomfort, unintentionally pressing on the sharp object. He cries out in agony as the glass shard blinds him, and the movements of his stomach make the scythe cut deeper.

While trying to brush the glass away, his hand finds something else—a key. It was hidden above the glass panel in the ceiling, and now Hansol’s tormented bod acts on instinct. He finds the locks that keep his chains in place and shakily turns the key inside them. One by one they unlock, and eventually Hansol is able to crawl out from underneath the ever descending scythe blade and fall to the floor beside the bed.

He lies there for a good ten minutes hugging himself and just breathing, the pain from his stomach and left eye bad but bearable. He can hear the scythe still swinging. Then the pounding on his door returns, and he struggles towards it on his hands and knees.

Junhui’s voice comes through the thick door, barely audible. “Hello!? Who’s in there!?”

“It’s me! Hansol!” he calls back.

“I’m so glad you’re awake! We need to hurry, is there anything in your room!? Names, codes, keys, anything!?”

Hansol looks around with his one good eye, covering the other with a bloodied hand. It’s a simple room, without windows, the bed standing to one wall with the blade over it, two doors and a TV screen. Junhui yells that he should turn the screen on and he does. A screeching feedback noise comes through hidden speakers, the screen comes to life and a message appears on it.

_다른 사람의 생명을 구하기 위해 누군가의 안전을 위협할 수 있어?_   
_(Can you risk someone’s safety to save someone else’s life?)_

Seconds after he reads the message, two small hatches open in the ceiling and two heavy ropes fall down to hang just off the floor.

“What are those?” comes Jeonghan’s voice unexpectedly, startling Hansol.

“What are what?” follows Sunyeong.

“Hyungs?” Hansol asks. He can hear that the voices are coming from speakers, and he can hear Junhui clearly now too although the door is still closed. Then his three olders explain their rooms, the puzzles and countdowns, and the Communications System. When Hansol turned on the TV he allowed Jeonghan to see him on his screens.

Jeonghan asks about the ropes again, and Hansol takes a closer look. “It’s just ropes... Oh, one has a blue end and one is red.”

There are also two notes attached to the rope ends. _위험 해_ and _위험 하지마_. ' _Risk it_ ' on the blue one and ' _Don’t risk it_ ' on the red. Hansol is more confused than scared. What‘s the point of all this?

“You don’t have much time, little brother,” Jeonghan says uneasily. “I don’t know if you can see it, but there’s a five-minute countdown on your screen here.”

Hansol swirls around, and his eyes grow wide when he sees his screen. There is indeed a countdown, just under five minutes now, but there are other things too. Video feeds, live from four different places, with names to clarify who the people in the feeds are.

Not that Hansol needs them—he knows his friends well enough.

_찬 • 승철 • 지수 • 준희_   
_(Chan, Seungcheol, Jisoo, Junhui.)_

“Jun-hyung, your name’s on my countdown,” Hansol says shakily, then the panic starts to rise. “What does it mean, I have to risk someone to save someone else? Hyung?”

“Calm down, Hansol-ah,” Sunyeong says.

“It’s okay,” Junhui adds, although nervous. “We’re in this together, just do your best and we’ll deal with it.”

“But—“

“The countdown, Hansol,” Jeonghan reminds him. “It’s worse to leave it be than to follow through. Trust us.”

Hansol swallows hard and turns to the ropes again. Should he pull on one of them, is that it? He guesses so. But what if someone is hurt? Who’s at risk and who’s to be saved? Does he really get no clues?

* * *

 

**THE CORRIDOR**

Seungcheol’s screen lights up for the first time in a while. He stretches as much as the metal collar allows him, rubs his tired eyes awake. He reads the message, and he screams inwards.

_한솔이 널 구원하면 찬이 죽겠어._   
_(If Hansol saves you, Chan dies.)_

From above his head, Chan’s tired voice sounds through the speakers. “You read it too, right, hyung?”

* * *

 

**THE BOILER ROOM**

The temperature is beyond livable. But in the blazing heat and dry atmosphere, somehow Jisoo’s lungs refuse to give out. His heart struggles for every beat, his mind shut off to spare him from the torture of the dehydration.

On the floor in front of him, his key still lies unused.

* * *

 

**THE CLASSROOM**

“No, Hansol, no! It’s a trick! It’s a damn trick!”

Mingyu screams at the invisible speakers, but he’s realized long ago that nobody can hear him. He can hear everyone, their dying breaths and desperate screams, their puzzle solving and attempts to escape. And here Mingyu is, with a map with thirteen rooms, almost every name scribbled in place, and hundreds of notes and books out of order. For hours he’s been figuring everything out, every puzzle and connection, the risks and the traps and how they are meant to escape.

And he can’t tell anyone because they can’t hear him. He’s useless.

“And I can only pick one?” he hears Hansol ask. “It says so here...”

“Then just choose one,” Junhui sighs. “There’s nothing else you can do. I’ll be okay.”

Mingyu can’t bear to hear another one of his friends scream like they were dying. He holds his hands over his ears, looks away from the map. He’s made the connection—Hansol hasn’t.

* * *

SHOULD HANSOL PULL THE RED ROPE

_or_

**SHOULD HE PULL THE BLUE ROPE?**

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	8. Every Choice Has Consequences

**THE CLASSROOM**

“Hyungs... I pulled the blue one, the one that said ‘ _Risk it_ ’ on it...”

Mingyu listens to Hansol through the speakers, collapses in his chair with a relieved sigh, then immediately starts crying. Why is he relieved? Because according to his calculations and every clue he has in front of him, pulling the blue rope is the least bad in the long run, and the only way they can all get out of here alive. Pulling the red rope would have cut the heat in Jisoo’s room but electrocuted Junhui, and Seungcheol—the only one who could set them all free—would still be locked up.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s time to celebrate. Because Mingyu knows that right now Chan’s trap has been set off, and the only one who can save him is Seungcheol. And if Wonwoo doesn’t wake up soon and figure his puzzle out, Jisoo will die. The same goes for Seokmin, who only has an hour or so left before the poison kills him.

Three keys have already been used or destroyed—Mingyu’s own is one of them. He used it to open the desk that contained the clues and map, but now he wonders if it was the right move. By doing so he now knows how everything is connected, but there’s no way for him to inform the others. That’s one thing he doesn’t know how to do—turn on his link to Jeonghan in the Control Room. He isn’t even sure he has one.

Through the speakers, Chan starts screaming. The sound is heart-wrenching and shrill, and Seungcheol tunes in to with desperate calls of his young friend’s name. At the same time Jeonghan, Hansol, Sunyeong and Junhui are talking, unaware of the terrible screams. Mingyu covers his ears, makes roaring noises of his own to block out the speakers. He feels guilty as if there is anything he can do.

He prays that Seungcheol is fast enough.

* * *

 

**THE BUTCHER ROOM**

The chain around his ankle, which has been long and loose all this time, tightens without warning and starts retracting into the wall it’s attached to. It pulls him towards the large chainsaw-like contraptions that fill the far end of the large room, where animals of all shapes and sizes hang from hooks on the ceiling, cut open and skinned. Although the machines are not on, Chan starts panicking. He forgets all about his injured leg and tries to fight the chain. He claws at the floor, skids with his feet across the tiles, grabs at table legs and chairs to no avail.

“Hyung! Hyung!”

Seungcheol is outside, banging on the metal door like a madman. “What’s happening, Chan!? Chan!”

Just then, the machines come alive. Like the worst horror movies Chan can remember seeing, the chainsaws run at terrifying speeds. The row of dead animals start moving too, and one by one they are pulled through the chainsaw machinery. They come out the other side in much smaller pieces.

Chan screams. His whole life passes him by. The thought of being cut open doesn’t even strike him, he just goes crazy. He digs his nails into the tile floor until they break, hold onto the bolted tables until his hands almost come apart.

He tries to kick a chair into the saws to see if they will get caught, but the wood just splinters and scatters everywhere.

When Chan’s legs are only a meter from the closest blade, something like an explosion sounds behind him. When he turns to look he can see smoke around the frame of the door, and then it flies open. Seungcheol runs inside, sees Chan, and fights the shock at what he sees.

“Help me!” Chan roars.

Seungcheol throws himself on the floor next to Chan and starts pulling on the chain. Even with their combined strength, it’s not enough. As fast as he can, Seungcheol runs and grabs another chain from the animal line up and pulls it free of its hooks. Then he throws one end into the chainsaw mouth and lets go. As he hoped it would, the chain tangles with the blades and gets stuck. A painful screech fills the entire house as the machines come to a dead stop, and Chan’s chain stops pulling him in.

“You okay?” Seungcheol asks as he returns to Chan. The younger just looks at him in shock, nods, then blinks a single tear away. Seungcheol pulls him into a tight embrace and holds the younger as they both cry in silence for a long while. Then he remembers the chain.

“Let’s get you out of this thing.”

* * *

 

**THE FREEZER ROOM**

It’s very slowly that Wonwoo returns to the world of the living, and when he’s finally awake is body still feels like a popsicle. Shivering and with the world’s worst headache, he reads the message that is written all across the wall. He’s sure it wasn’t there before, but there might have been frost or ice in the way.

_얼음과 유리. 석민은 생존하려면 둘 다 깨야 해. 빛과 불. 지수는 생존하려면 둘 다 죽어야 해._   
_(Ice and glass. Both have to break for Seokmin to survive. Light and fire. Both have to die for Jisoo to survive.)_

Wonwoo sits up with difficulty.

“Hyung, you still there? Jisoo-hyung?”

He tries for a long time but no answer comes. Beat down and afraid for his friends, Wonwoo hugs his knees. He doesn’t know what to do or how to break any of the things the message tells him to.

That’s when he sees that there’s a white, blank paper nailed to the white wall, near invisible. He rips it off, turns it over and finds another message—or more like instructions.

_To break the ice, find your key._

_To kill the fire, leave it be._

_To break the glass, you must be free._

_To kill the light, pick one or three._

_Minghao, Seungcheol, Chan... or Me._

It takes him a good long while, but following the instructions, he manages to find his key underneath a loose drain cover. It’s fragile, so very fragile, but functional.

“Jisoo-hyung, if you’re alive...” Wonwoo starts, his voice catching in his throat from the horror of the words. “... please tell me what to do...”

No answer comes. Wonwoo is alone in his decision.

* * *

 

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

Jeonghan stares with wide eyes at the drawer that just burst open, heart beating fast and adrenalin rushing.

“You alright, hyung?” Sunyeong asks.

“Just another drawer,” Jeonghan replies. “I’m growing tired of these explosions all the time, I’ll have a heart attack soon.”

He walks over and pulls out a sheet of laminated paper from the smoking drawer. He reads it aloud to his friends.

_Jeonghan • Seungcheol_

_Seungkwan • Hansol_

_Junhui • Chan_

_Wonwoo • Jisoo_

_Jihun • Seokmin_

_Sunyeong • Mingyu_

“Sunyeong-ah, I think these could be more name combinations. In fact, I think it’s all of them.”

“I think so too,” Sunyeong says. “Should I try one of them?”

“Hold on, why wasn’t Minghao’s name on that list?” Junhui interrupts. “Isn’t he in here somewhere too?”

“We don’t know, he’s not on my screens,” Jeonghan explains. “And there’s no locker with his name either.”

Together, the four connected rooms agree that they should try to open Hansol’s locker. In the Locker Room, Sunyeong puts in the number combination for Seungkwan’s name, and carefully presses the side button. An echoey, metallic sound fills the speakers, then Hansol and Junhui start cheering.

“Hyungs!” Hansol laughs. “One of my doors opened! Junhui’s in here with me now. It worked!”

* * *

 

**THE LOCKER ROOM**

Sunyeong would have laughed in joy too at the progress, if not for what he sees inside Hansol’s locker—a warning sign for high voltage and a scribbled countdown in chalk that says five minutes.

“What the-“ Junhui exclaims suddenly. “The drain in my room, it’s... it’s spewing water. Oh, hell no...”

“What?” Sunyeong and Jeonghan call together.

“There’s a powerline going all around Hansol’s room,” Junhui continues, voice serious and strained. “I think it just came alive, it’s sparking.”

Sunyeong looks at the high voltage sign. Electricity plus water equals electrocution. He is starting to wonder if whoever put them here even wants them to be able to survive.

* * *

SHOULD WONWOO KILL THE FIRE

_or_

**SHOULD HE BREAK THE GLASS?**

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	9. SPECIAL CHAPTER #1

Here follows a complete line-up of the choices you as readers have made at the end of every chapter, what results your choices had and what would have happened if you’d chosen differently.

 

> **CHAPTER ONE**

**Winning option: Sunyeong opens Jeonghan’s locker.**

The first failed attempt revealed that every mistake has dangerous consequences when Jeonghan’s drawer explodes, and also Minghao’s space shrinks. The successful try reveals Seungcheol’s importance and the code note for all the lockers.

**Other options: Jeonghan stops him OR He opens Hansol’s locker.**

If he’d been stopped, nothing would have happened at all, so no progress. Had he opened Hansol’s locker they would have been given a choice that could have saved both Hansol and Junhui from their traps earlier but no code note and nothing on Seungcheol.

 

> **CHAPTER TWO**

**Winning option: Sunyeong saves his key.**

This means that Sunyeong’s key will still be available at the end of the story when its time to open the last door and escape the house, but it also means that Seungcheol remains locked up.

**Other option: Use the key to open Seungcheol’s locker.**

Choosing this option would have released Seungcheol, but broken Sunyeong’s key, making it useless later. He’d been able to help and set other members free much, much sooner since he is in the Corridor which connects many rooms.

 

> **CHAPTER THREE**

**Winning option: Seungcheol saves Sunyeong.**

Although the poll ended at 50/50, I had started writing at a time when this option had more votes. This option gave Jeonghan the ability to start the Communications System with a handbook and stopped Sunyeong’s drowning trap, but we lost Junhui’s key which will be important later.

**Other options: Seungcheol saves Junhui.**

This option would have given Seungcheol the ability to speak to Junhui, connecting him to both Jun and Chan sooner, as well as Hansol. Could possibly have resulted in Seungcheol’s release, but Sunyeong’s chances of survival would have been extremely small and depended entirely on the subsequent vote.

 

> **CHAPTER FOUR**

**Winning option: Activate the Communications System for the Bathroom.**

This saved Junhui’s life and connected him to Jeonghan and Sunyeong, and eventually Hansol. Seungcheol remains locked up and Seokmin remains poisoned.

**Other options: Activate the CS in the Interrogation Room OR in the Corridor.**

Activating the Interrogation Room would have killed Junhui, but connected both Seokmin and eventually Jihun to the Control Room which would have saved Seokmin from the poison. Activating the Corridor would have set Seungcheol free, and he would have been able to save Junhui if the subsequent choice had been “correct”.

 

> **CHAPTER FIVE**

**Winning option: Sunyeong raises the temperature.**

Since both rooms are connected, this saves Wonwoo in the Freezer Room but puts Jisoo in more danger in the Boiler Room.

**Other options: Sunyeong leaves the temperature be.**

This would have spared Jisoo of more danger but Wonwoo would have had much less time to be saved. Seungkwan would have had the possibility to connect to the Control Room.

 

> **CHAPTER SIX**

**Winning option: Seungkwan shatters Hansol’s glass.**

This gives Hansol his key which he uses to escape his scythe trap. It connects him to the Control Room, but Seokmin’s poisoning continues to get worse and he’s separated from Jihun with the antidote.

**Other options: Seungkwan shatters Jihun’s glass.**

This would have shattered the window between Jihun and Seokmin, uniting them and saving Seokmin. Hansol would still have been saved by Junhui, but he’d be much more badly injured although his key would still be available later. Instead of Hansol getting the blue rope/red rope dilemma, Seokmin’s puzzle would have been revealed, which we still don’t know what it is.

 

> **CHAPTER SEVEN**

**Winning option: Hansol pulls the blue ‘Risk it!’ rope.**

This sets of Chan’s Butcher Trap but releases Seungcheol in time to save him. Jisoo remains locked up in the heat of the Boiler Room and Mingyu still can’t connect to the Control Room. Junhui and Hansol are united, but Junhui’s trap is set off. The next dilemma falls to Wonwoo.

**Other options: Hansol pulls the red ‘Don’t risk it!’ rope.**

This would have opened Jisoo’s Boiler Room door and he’d been able to help Seungcheol escape eventually, at the cost of Jisoo’s key. Junhui’s electrocution trap would have been set off while he’s still alone making it much more dangerous, and his survival would have depended on the next dilemma, which would have fallen to Mingyu.

So, are you still happy with your choices? The story could have been very different, and I love that idea, which is also why I love the choices you’ve made so far!

* * *

 

**THE KIDNAPPING**

_Tuesday 17th of August, 10:10 PM_

Seoul is never fully dark like this. The city is so full of lights and neon that the sky never finds that nightly blackness. Here in the smalls of nature, in a village that is known for its secretion and calm, the evening is so black it almost makes the boys scared of the dark.

After a good dinner put together by some of the better cooks in the group and their generous hosts, Mingyu and Seokmin pull most of the others into a video game competition. Seungcheol says he’ll go for a short run and then join them, and Jeonghan comes with him just because he feels like it. They take a tour around the neighbourhood at a comfortable pace, talk and laugh and enjoy the freedom of being outside without a single person noticing them for once. This vacation is worth it although it’s short—they’re going back to Seoul in just two days.

Wonwoo goes to bed early because he’s still feeling the effects of a cold he got right before they came here. He takes a shower, closes the window completely, pulls the blankets close around him in bed and drifts off quickly. He doesn’t think about the fact that he never opened the window in the first place.

Seungcheol and Jeonghan can see the house again and slow down to a walk. Jeonghan is laughing at a pun Seungcheol made when the stun dart hits Seungcheol in the shoulder. They can’t see who shot it and Seungcheol collapses. Jeonghan screams once before a dart hits him too, and he goes down.

Jihun is too good at this game, it’s not even funny. He prepares to sleep with pride at being the master of a game for once, while Junhui takes a shower. Jihun doesn’t even make it to his bedroom before he’s knocked out.

Minghao, Chan, Seokmin and Jisoo go to the pool to cool themselves off before bed, while Sunyeong and Mingyu prepare to head out and see if Seungcheol and Jeonghan have gotten lost in the unfamiliar town.

Seungkwan and Hansol continue their gaming contest. When Hansol goes into the kitchen to grab them a snack, he’s apprehended by a shadow with a syringe. Seungkwan hears the commotion and rushes to see what’s going on, but falls victim to the shadow as well. They are dragged out the same way the kidnappers took Jihun and Wonwoo, past where their hosts lie tied up and knocked out.

The same dart blowing man that took out Jeonghan and Seungcheol gets the drop on Sunyeong. Mingyu takes action and manages to get a solid kick in the face of the attacker, but he’s outmatched. A syringe flies at his neck and strikes, and he collapses next to Sunyeong.

Nobody in the pool notices the man sneaking up on Jisoo before it’s too late and he’s already been shot with the sedative. Chan attempts to fight the man off with everything he’s got, but with a slice of a knife Chan’s leg is cut open and he falls victim to the next syringe. Minghao runs when Seokmin yells at him to, and he doesn’t see when Seokmin is knocked out and sedated.

Minghao rushes up the stairs, screaming Junhui’s name, to where he thinks help is lying in bed sleeping. What he finds is a man pulling Junhui by the arms, unconscious and beaten raw. He kicks the man away, uses every martial arts skill he possesses to fight, but he’s too shocked to think. He receives a blow to the head that knocks him to the ground, awake but unable to stand up again. He cries Junhui’s name, pleads with him to wake up and save them.

The three men responsible come together above him. They’re out of syringes and darts. Their voices are vaguely familiar. Since he can’t fight back anymore, Minghao’s pulled out of the house and thrown into the back of a truck. He tries to wake his friends up but he can’t. He’s scared, angry, in pain.

They drive for hours. When they finally stop and the doors open, Minghao sees a large concrete building and nothing else—no people, no cities, no help. Just forest and emptiness and their three kidnappers.

They fetch a syringe and they knock him out with it. The next thing Minghao knows, he’s reading a message written in blood on the ceiling of a small concrete tomb.

_친구의 실수에 대해 지불 할 거야. 공정하네?_   
_(You’ll pay for your friends’ mistakes. That’s fair, right?)_

 


	10. The Boiler Room Opens

**THE MIRROR ROOM**

It’s painful, picking out pieces of glass from already open wounds, but he does it. Seungkwan doesn’t know what else to do. He’s alone, without clues and mission, separated from the new door and unable to destroy anymore glasses no matter how much he screams.

That’s when the door on the other side of the barrier suddenly swings open with a metallic shriek, and Wonwoo steps out. Staggering and sick-looking, his hyung drops one half of a broken key on the floor, then he sees Seungkwan and his eyes almost start to glow.

“Hyung! Hyung!” Seungkwan calls in happy shock. He runs into the glass barrier, beating at it as if it would help now when it hasn’t so far.

Wonwoo’s still confused and stressed by the message and his mission. He looks around himself, wonders what he’s supposed to do and why Seungkwan can’t get to him. Then he sees the table with the glasses, the names attached to them and the shards of Hansol’s glass. The sign underneath which says ‘scream’ on Seungkwan’s side, instead says ‘break them all’ on Wonwoo’s side.

Without thinking too much, Wonwoo stumbles up to the table, takes a deep breath, and looks at Seungkwan. The younger stares back questioningly. Then Wonwoo swings his arm through the line of glasses, sending them all crashing to the floor.

The glass barrier between them shatters with a deafening crack and Seungkwan throws himself backwards as the pieces rain down. He manages to avoid the worst of it, and when it’s over he stares at Wonwoo and smiles.

Wonwoo, however, is terrified. “What have I done?”

* * *

 

**THE INTERROGATION ROOM**

Jihun uses his hoodie as protection against the still dangerous window frame to climb into Seokmin’s room. He doesn’t know how the glass broke or why, and he doesn’t care. He almost slips on the shards on the floor when he lands. Then he throws himself on his knees next to Seokmin, who is lying unmoving on the floor by the table.

“Seokmin-ah? Can you hear me? Please, say something! Seokmin-ah!”

His calls are useless. Seokmin is pale as a sheet, greyish and warm. Very warm, like a fever is raging in his body. In one hand, Jihun holds the syringe in a cramping fist. He doesn’t know if the horrors the others have faced, and is therefore not afraid to use the means he’s been given to save his friend.

Without hesitation, he sticks the syringe into Seokmin’s arm and pushes the back end. Then he holds Seokmin in his arms, the younger man’s frame so large against his own smallness.

“You’ll be alright,” he chants. “You’ll be alright.”

They stay like that for a while, Jihun checking Seokmin’s temperature every minute to see if it’s dropping. Eventually, he thinks that it does. He folds his hoodie into a pillow and puts Seokmin down, then examines the room like he had his own. It takes only a second to notice the new message on the screen in the back.

_켜._   
_(Turn it on.)_

Dumbfounded he starts feeling across the frame of the TV and finds a single button. He presses it, and a feedback noise fills the silence as if when turning on a speaker.

* * *

 

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

It’s been a long time since Jeonghan stopped looking at his screens, which are giving him nothing but worry—Junhui and Hansol are sitting on Hansol’s bed to stay clear of the water on the floor, which very slowly closes in on the live electric wires, and ever since Seokmin woke up he’s been out of frame in his screen. The message that flashes on Wonwoo’s screen isn’t helping either.

_원우의 결정을 기다리고 있기._   
_(Awaiting Wonwoo’s decision.)_

That is why it’s such a welcome sound now that Jeonghan flies up from his chair when the speakers give off feedback. The screen with Jihun’s name on it turns black before showing a message for a short moment.

_원우가 결정했어. 여기 상금이 있어._   
_(Wonwoo has decided. Here’s your prize.)_

Jeonghan wants to cry with happiness when the screen switches to another view of the Interrogation Room, and Jihun’s face appears. “Jihun-ah!”

“Jeonghan-hyung? Is that you?”

“Yes, yes, it’s me! You turned on the Communications System. You can hear Sunyeong-ah too, and Junhui-ya and Hansol-ah.”

“Are you alright, hyung?” Hansol asks.

“I’m fine, I’m with Seokmin-ah,” Jihun explains. “He’s been poisoned, but I gave him an antidote and he’s getting better, I think.”

The now five people update each other on their situations. Sadly, Jihun knows nothing more about the rest of their friends than Jeonghan does. Frustration builds up, quenched only by a relief that Seokmin is safe, when the screen with Jisoo’s name suddenly flashes a new message.

_상금있었어. 이제 이것이 결과있어._   
_(You had your prize. Now here’s the consequence.)_

The message vanishes, and a new live feed replaces it. It’s a dim lit room with large metal cylinders in it, and a shape is lying on the floor unmoving. Jeonghan can’t see his face, but he knows that it must be Jisoo. His heart contracts. Then new messages fade in and out over the live feed.

_당신들은 대신에 다른 사람을 세 번이나 선택했어. 지수가 제거됐어._   
_(You have chosen other people over him three times. Jisoo has been removed.)_

* * *

 

**THE CORRIDOR**

With a loud knock and a shriek, one of the steel doors swings open slowly and a wave of hot air escapes. Seungcheol stops treating Chan’s leg injury at the noise, and they take an anxious look at each other. When nobody comes out and nothing happens, Seungcheol stands up and walks over.

“Wait, I’m coming too,” Chan says and struggles to his feet. Seungcheol helps him, and together they enter the hot Boiler Room.

They find Jisoo in the middle of the room, unconscious in a heap on the floor. Seungcheol lets go of Chan and runs to him, kneels and tries to shake him awake.

“Jisoo! We’re here,” he says. “It’s alright now, I’m here. It’s Seungcheol. Come on, Jisoo, wake up.”

Jisoo is unresponsive, limp when Seungcheol shakes him. Sweat is already pouring from the intense heat. Chan sits down beside them, takes his younger hyung’s hand in his.

“Come on, wake up,” Seungcheol continues, more frantic now. “Open your eyes. Please, Jisoo...”

“Hyung,” Chan says. Seungcheol looks up, sees tears in his younger’s eyes. “Hyung, he’s not...”

Chan’s voice breaks. Seungcheol sees how Chan is holding Jisoo’s wrist—to check his pulse.

“No,” Seungcheol breathes. He holds his fingers against Jisoo’s neck, his lips, his nose. “No, no, no... Jisoo? Jisoo! Listen to me, you’re not dead. You’re not dead!”

He tries everything—crying, pleading, CPR. Jisoo doesn’t wake up. Chan pleads too, but even his heart-wrenching cries are left unheard. Seungcheol pulls Jisoo into his arms, holds him tight and rocks from side to side. “No, no, no, no... Please, don’t. Please don’t leave...”

It’s too late, and deep down he knows it. Jisoo is gone. And he’s not coming back.

* * *

 

**THE CLASSROOM**

Through the tears in his eyes and the unbelievable pain in his heart, Mingyu sees the change on the TV screen in the front of the room. The screen which so far has only displayed the word ‘ _Statistics_ ’ at the top. Now it’s filled with text that Mingyu’s expected to read.

He doesn’t want to. How could he? He just heard one of his friends die. He can still hear Seungcheol and Chan’s crying, and the frantic conversation between Jeonghan, Sunyeong, Junhui and Hansol, who can see what’s happening in the Boiler Room but not hear it. Now and again a few words between Wonwoo and Seungkwan slip through too, and they have no idea what’s going on even though Wonwoo has his suspicions.

It’s too much. It can’t be real. Mingyu blinks the tears away in a rage, screams a string of curses and profanity into thin air at their kidnappers. His heart aches again. Jisoo.

Eventually, he reads what’s on the screen anyway, perhaps because he knows that the only way to make sure nobody else suffers like Jisoo, they have to continue the game.

**Seungcheol: Strikes [1/3] Key [YES]**  
**Jeonghan: Strikes [0/3] Key [YES]**  
**Jisoo: Strikes [3/3] (eliminated) Key [YES]**  
**Junhui: Strikes [2/3] Key [NO]**  
**Sunyeong: Strikes [1/3] Key [YES]**  
**Wonwoo: Strikes [2/3] Key [NO]**  
**Jihun: Strikes [0/3] Key [YES]**  
**Seokmin: Strikes [2/3] Key [YES]**  
**Mingyu: Strikes [0/3] Key [NO]**  
**Seungkwan: Strikes [1/3] Key [YES]**  
**Hansol: Strikes [1/3] Key [NO]  
** **Chan: Strikes [2/3] Key [NO]**

**Wild Card: Activate Communications System for [1] channel.**

**Insert Channel: __________**

Mingyu knows he should be happy—he has the chance to be able to talk to one group of friends and tell them what he knows. But in the shadow of Jisoo’s loss, it’s just another step in the direction of more horror. Either way, he has to be smart, or else he might be responsible for another friend’s death soon, and he couldn’t handle that.

* * *

SHOULD MINGYU CONNECT HIS ROOM TO

**JEONGHAN'S CHANNEL**

_or_

SEUNGCHEOL'S CHANNEL

_or_

SEUNGKWAN'S CHANNEL?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	11. The Traps Won't Wait

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

“You have to talk to us, hyung!” Junhui commands through the speakers. “We can’t see what you see.”

It’s almost that Jeonghan can’t see it either, he’s crying too much. The tears won’t stop coming, even while his heart still refuses to believe what the screen tells him—that Seungcheol and Chan have managed to get into the dreaded Boiler Room, and that their desperate attempts to save Jisoo have failed.

That Jisoo is dead.

“I... I... There’s... I don’t...” No words can pass his trembling lips. If only he could hear what’s going on in the Boiler Room, then maybe he could confirm. But the sight of Seungcheol holding Jisoo’s limp form is starting to suffice. “I think that... that Jisoo-ya...”

“That Jisoo is what, hyung?” Sunyeong presses.

As if on cue, the sound of feedback through the speakers come again. Mingyu’s voice is ragged and lifeless when he speaks.

“Jeonghan-hyung, can you hear me?”

“Mingyu-ya!” Jeonghan cries out in some version of excitement.

“Oh, my god, you’re alive!” Hansol exclaims in English, then switches back. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Mingyu replies weakly. “Jeonghan-hyung... you can see the Boiler Room. I can hear them from here. What do you see...?”

Frantically, Jeonghan tells him. Jisoo is not moving, and he hasn’t since the screen came on. He reads the message again, which says that Jisoo has been ‘deleted’. In return, Mingyu sighs and swallows his sobs.

“He’s dead,” he says. “He died because he saved Wonwoo, because Hansol saved Seungcheol, and because Wonwoo saved Seokmin.”

Jeonghan collapses on the floor, his knees too weak to carry him.

* * *

 

**THE CLASSROOM**

As all of them let their emotions free, Mingyu waits. Right now, everyone in every room is crying—even Wonwoo and Seungkwan in the Mirror Room. Wonwoo has figured that perhaps he has caused Jisoo harm with his decision, and it eats at Mingyu’s heart to hear his guilty words and deep, guttural crying. But somewhere, somehow, he has already pushed everything aside and switched into player-mode. He won’t let anyone else get hurt or die, and if he is to keep that promise, he needs everyone to cooperate.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have time. Or rather, Jun and Hansol don’t have time. Your trap is set off, it won’t stop until we solve the puzzle or one of you die.”

This jumpstarts Jeonghan, Sunyeong and Jihun. “How do you know? You sound like you know something we don’t,” Jihun says.

“I know everything, that’s my room, the Classroom. I’ve heard you guys from the start. Everything is connected and every one of us has a role to play, that’s the game. No matter how much we hate it we have to play, or else someone is gonna end up like Jisoo-hyung and I won’t let anybody else die.”

No argument, no questions. Mingyu continues.

“We have completed two Objectives now, according to the game book. The first was waking up and the first puzzles and traps, the second was the Communications System. If I made the right choice, choosing to be able to talk to you instead of Seungcheol-hyung, we should now be entering Objective 3. We need to unite. All of us.”

“How do we do that?” Junhui asks.

Mingyu hesitates. “I don’t know. It’s not instructions I have, I just know which choices have what consequences and what comes next, I don’t know exactly how to do every single step.”

“So what comes next?” Jihun presses again. “What do you know?”

“I know that whatever happens, Seungcheol and Chan have to use Jisoo’s key to save Wonwoo and Seungkwan from the Mirror Room. Isn’t there a countdown on any of your screens? They have just over fifteen minutes before the room explodes... which is also the same amount of time we have before Jun’s trap electrifies the entire floor.”

For a moment, everyone is silent and thinks hard. Then Sunyeong drops the question Mingyu’s been dreading the entire time. “Are you sure that what your game book tells you is true? You don’t think it could be a trick, like with Hansol’s ropes?”

Mingyu decides to be honest. “I have no idea if they are true or not. But so far they haven’t been wrong.”

* * *

 

**THE CORRIDOR**

Once the worst of the shock settles and pure grief takes over, Seungcheol lifts Jisoo in his arms and carries him out of the Boiler Room. He puts him down in a corner, as peaceful as a sleeping beauty, and turns away before he starts crying again. His gut is telling him the same thing Mingyu already knows—he can’t break down now. If he does, more people will die. So Seungcheol swallows it all, acts strong for Chan, and takes forth the key from his pocket.

It’s Jisoo’s key, hidden inside a crumpled note in Jisoo’s hand.

_다시 같은 실수를 하고 싶어? 다음에 “미러 룸” 열자. 준희가 좋아할 거야._   
_(Want to make the same mistake again? Let’s open the Mirror Room next. Junhui will like that.)_

“What does that mean?” Chan asks after reading over Sungcheol’s shoulder. “Should we use hyu... hyung’s key..?”

“I think so,” Seungcheol agrees and pulls out his own key as well. He’d found it attached to the back of the steel collar when it released him, right before he used the bomb inside it to blast Chan’s door open and save him. “Question is, if this is what Jisoo’s key is for, then what’s mine for?”

Chan thinks about it but comes up with nothing. His hand feels his own key through the shirt, hanging from a thin rope around his neck. It’s broken, worthless, but he keeps it anyway. Seungcheol used it to unlock his wrist chain, something Chan himself did not think about when he was being pulled towards the cutting machine.

“What do you think, Channie?” Seungcheol says, calm and cold. “Which room should we open?”

Chan finds that Seungcheol is not looking at him, but rather at something closer to the floor—the touchpad he’d been forced to watch while locked to the neck ring. They haven’t seen it until now, but there’s a short, flashing message and a six-minute countdown on the screen, ticking away fast.

_발리 발리._   
_(Hurry now.)_

* * *

 

**THE BEDROOM**

Through the open Bathroom door, Hansol and Junhui can see that the water flow from the drain under the bathtub is increasing quickly. The water is already knee high and covering both rooms, and the two boys are standing on Hansol’s bed to keep from touching the water. It hasn’t reached the live power lines yet, but it’s not many minutes until it does.

“Any ideas, little brother?” Junhui asks.

“Nothing,” Hansol admits reluctantly.

“Don’t worry, and stay still,” Mingyu tells them. “Trust that Leader-hyung makes the right decision.”

“Hello, that decision is opening the Mirror Room, right? And we have the same amount of time they do!” Hansol counters.

“You’ll be okay as long as you don’t touch the water.”

“That’s just it though, Mingyu,” Junhui says. “It’s a metal bed, and the water will reach the underside and soak through the mattress after it hits the live wires. It’ll fry us!”

“Now you tell me that!?” Mingyu exclaims, then starts rummaging through his books. “Wait, okay, I’ll see if there’s anything here...”

Junhui waits, puts an arm around Hansol’s shoulders to keep them both balanced on the uneven bed. The water’s flooding faster and faster.

“Hurry, Mingyu-ya!” Jeonghan calls, voice still cracking from the grief and crying. “Two minutes!”

Junhui is starting to freak for real, and when he does he feels his survival instincts clouding his common sense. He looks around the room, sees things in a way he would never do if it wasn’t life or death—like how the scythe can be used as a swing, and the Bathroom door is open and can be held onto...

“Screw the book, Mingyu, I have an idea,” Junhui says suddenly. Hansol gives him an anxious but hopeful look. “I’m gonna jump.”

“You’re gonna what!?” Mingyu, Jeonghan, Sunyeong and Jihun exclaim almost in unison.

“That’s crazy!” Hansol adds, gesturing around them.

Junhui isn’t so easily swayed. He pulls Hansol closer, then points just to the side of the Bathroom door.

“You see those wires? The ones about to electrocute us?” Hansol nods. “See how they disappear through the wall up there by the doorframe? I think I remember seeing an electric box or something inside my door. If I can get to it, I might be able to turn the electricity off.”

“That’s a whole lot of ‘maybe’s, hyung,” Hansol says and shakes his head, dark eyes pleading. “Don’t.”

“I agree, Jun, stop it,” Sunyeong says. “I know your moves better than anyone here, and you can’t do it. It’s too far.”

“How do you know, you can’t see in here,” Junhui counters. His voice is steady—he has already decided. “And there’s one person who knows my moves better than you. If he was here he’d know I can do it.”

Sunyeong goes into leader mode in seconds, matching the cool of Junhui’s voice with his own power and authority. “Minghao wouldn’t want you to die.”

Junhui ignores him, prepares his body to swing from the scythe and jump for the open door.

He says the last thing with a sad smile. “Like I said, he isn’t here.”

* * *

**SHOULD SEUNGCHEOL OPEN THE MIRROR ROOM**

_or_

SHOULD HE OPEN THE BEDROOM?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	12. The Game Stops

**THE BEDROOM**

Hansol stops himself from reaching for his hyung when Junhui steps onto the scythe. He finds a swing rhythm that matches the movements the scythe’s motor is already making, then jumps off it at the perfect moment. He flies towards the open door, finds the top edge with his fingers and grabs hold of it with everything he’s got. The door swings with the force of his impact and slams into the wall, splashing the water around. Hansol is convinced that it hit the power lines, but when the water calms down again it still has a few centimetres left.

Grunting with the effort it requires to hang onto the door, Junhui still finds the heart to look at Hansol and smile.

“Told you.”

“Be careful, dammit,” Jeonghan mutters through the speakers, obviously watching Junhui on his screens with unwavering eyes.

With arms already trembling from the weight and with no foothold, Junhui moves slowly but surely towards the doorframe. When he is as close as he can get and sweating, he carefully lets go with one hand and reaches into the Bathroom blindly. He knocks on the concrete wall, feeling around until he finds the electric box, and makes a celebratory sound when he manages to get it open.

His fingers find something that feels like a switch inside, and wires that connect to the live ones in the Bedroom. With only seconds left before his one-hand hold will slip, Junhui bravely flicks the switch.

Hansol watches in horror as his hyung goes tense all over before something like a lightning strike illuminates the inside of the Bathroom and both rooms go dark. He hears how Junhui loses his grip on the door and crashes into the water, the splashing movements as his body shakes violently, then the silence when he goes still.

“Jun-hyung! Jun-hyung!”

Nobody answers. Hansol doesn’t think twice about it—he jumps in the water too and starts wading towards where he last saw his hyung. The water is cold, but it doesn’t shock him. Junhui must have short-circuited the entire building, including the live power lines.

Hansol fumbles in the water and around him, and it doesn’t take him long to find Junhui. The older is floating face down by the door, unmoving. Hansol grabs him and turns him around, then lifts his upper body out of the water.

“Come on, hyung, don’t do this!” he grunts through gritted teeth and he pulls Junhui back towards the bed. He manages to lift the larger boy into the mattress and lay him down. “Hyung? Hyung! Wake up!”

He retains enough sense to feel for a pulse. Nothing. With racing heartbeat, he checks his older’s breathing. Still nothing.

Junhui’s heart has stopped.

* * *

 

**THE CORRIDOR**

“How’d you manage to break a key!?” Chan almost screams. Frustration has built on top of the grief and fear, too much for his young mind to handle.

“I don’t know,” Seungcheol snaps back, only a little calmer. “It’s fragile.”

That’s when the power goes out and the Corridor turns absolutely pitch black. Both boys lose their bearings almost immediately. Seungcheol thinks quickly and asks Chan to go find the touchpad. Chan fumbles for it and lights it up, and in the light of the screen Seungcheol tires to work Jisoo’s broken key. It’s impossible to turn in inside the lock or even get it all the way in. The countdown on the touchpad has frozen, and a notification that looks strangely normal tells them that it has lost connection to the internet.

Frustrated and disappointed in himself for breaking something so important, Seungcheol slams his hand down onto the door handle. To his great surprise, it moves and the door clicks.

How could the door be open without having turned the key?

Full of anticipation and also anxious, Seungcheol pulls the door open to reveal a second, pitch black room. He can’t see a thing. However, when Chan moves inside with the touchpad, its light reflects everywhere and endlessly.

Mirrors, of course.

“Hyung? Chan?” The voice is so soft and hopeful that it warms Seungcheol’s frozen heart.

“Seungkwan-hyung! Wonwoo-hyung!” Chan exclaims and runs into the room. He drops to his knees between the two, all three burying themselves in the others’ embrace. Seungcheol stumbles in too, and he wraps his arms as much around all of them as he can. He feels tears pool in his eyes, and he lets them soak into Wonwoo’s shirt.

“What happened?” Seungkwan asks. “Why’d all the lights go out?”

“I don’t know,” Seungcheol replies. “Either it’s part of the game, or something went wrong.”

Wonwoo’s mouth is open as if to say something, lips trembling. When all of them pull away, he looks at Seungcheol. “Jisoo... I was able to talk to him in my room before I passed out, but when I woke up... Do you know where he is? Can we open his room too?”

Seungcheol’s heart breaks for the second time as he tells Wonwoo and Seungkwan what happened. He and Chan take the shocked two to the corner of the Corridor where Jisoo lies, looking like he’s sleeping although the colour is slowly leaving his skin.

He allows his two friends from the Mirror Room to break down and grieve for as long as they need. The cries are horrible to listen to, and he realizes that more than half of his friends might not know yet. Are they even all still alive?

As Chan sits with Wonwoo and Seungkwan, Seungcheol does something he hasn’t had the time to do yet. With the light of the touchpad, he walks down the Corridor, around the corner and all the way to the other end. Nine doors—the Boiler Room, Butcher Room and Mirror Room doors that are open now, the Bedroom and the Classroom which he could see before. The other half of the Corridor has the Music Room, the Interrogation Room, the Control Room, and a second door to the Classroom.

Without having made a conscious choice, Seungcheol starts knocking on the door labelled ' _Control Room_ '.

“Anyone in here? Hello?”

* * *

 

**THE CLASSROOM**

This isn’t part of the game. He has read the books and notes he got over and over for hours before he could talk to Jeonghan, and there is nothing about a power box or a blackout. He is starting to think that perhaps Junhui’s move was unplanned for—not a part of the kidnappers’ blueprint.

Either way, Mingyu is terrified that something bad has happened since the last thing he heard through the speakers was a weird electrical noise and Hansol’s raw scream before the power went away and the Communications System died. He wonders also about the countdown for using Jisoo’s key. Is that still going even without the power?

“Jeonghan? Sunyeong? Hansol? Anyone?” He says it over and over but it’s useless. He’s alone again, and he guesses that everyone else is too.

Not many minutes of total blackness pass before he hears an entirely new sound. It’s vibrations, he realizes, like from a phone. Quickly he starts rummaging through the drawers and shelves of the Classroom, every desk and box. He finds that the sounds are coming from inside a locked drawer in the teacher’s desk.

It stops ringing, then starts again. Mingyu decides that he has to answer and starts trying to break into the drawer. He pulls, bends, kicks at it with every ounce of strength he has. He flips the entire desk and goes for the construction itself, breaking fingernails and skin as he tries. The phone continues to ring, and when Mingyu finally manages to force the drawer open, he picks the small smartphone up and answers it without thinking.

“Hello?”

“There’s a switchboard above one of the ceiling tiles closest to the front door,” a voice on the other end says. It’s not one of his friends. It’s a man’s voice, but if Mingyu didn’t know better he’d say that he still recognizes it from somewhere. “Turn the power back on. If you don’t do it now, we’ll kill little Minghao first thing when we get the power on ourselves.”

_Click_. The call ends and Mingyu is left with the heaviest weight on his heart so far. That voice belongs to their kidnapper or one of them. He just talked to a man who killed Jisoo, and he threatened to kill Minghao too.

So Minghao _is_ here. Mingyu wasn’t sure until now since his name isn’t on the statistics, Sunyeong’s lockers or on Jeonghan’s screens.

He looks at the phone in his hand with hatred. He’s sure now that this isn’t part of the game. If he turns the power back on, the game continues. If he refuses they might get the chance to turn the rooms in their favour and escape. But if the kidnappers then get the electricity back on their own, will they really kill Minghao?

Mingyu is sure that they would.

* * *

SHOULD MINGYU TURN THE POWER BACK ON

_or_

**SHOULD HE REFUSE TO DO IT?**

_(Winning option marked in_ bond _font.)_

 


	13. Breaktime Is Over

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

The knocking is barely audible, but Jeonghan notices it because of the complete and utter silence that has filled the room since the power vanished. He hasn’t dared moved from his chair by the control panel until now, and he fumbles in the dark in the direction he remembers the door to be. But something’s off. He had believed that it was Sunyeong knocking from the Locker Room—this sound is coming from the other door.

Before Jeonghan can even reach it, the door suddenly swings open with a metallic screech, and a small light source peeks through. A figure steps inside, and in the light of a touchpad, Jeonghan finds a familiar face.

“Seungcheol-ah!” he all but cries out, and throws himself into his friend’s arms.

Seungcheol hugs him tight, nose buried in his hair for no other reason than because he thought that he might not get to see Jeonghan again. Then the younger pulls away, and in the weak light, Seungcheol sees how red his eyes are.

“How’d you get in here?” he asks. “The door...”

“I think it’s unlocked,” Seungcheol counters quickly, the speed of his mind increasing by the second. “I think that when the power came off, the locks died too, that they’re electromagnetic or something- anyway. Let’s get the others before it comes back on. Quickly!”

Jeonghan barely has time to register the words before Seungcheol grabs him by the hand and pulls him along. Jeonghan pulls free however and rushes for the other door. This one too opens without a problem, and Jeonghan calls inside.

“Sunyeong-ah!”

Sunyeong rushes towards them from inside the darkness. “You have to be kidding me, how’d you do that?”

“Questions later, doors first,” Seungcheol orders, and leads his two friends by the light of the touchpad through the Corridor.

Sunyeong opens the door to the Interrogation Room and rushes inside to check on Jihun and Seokmin. Seokmin is still unconscious and feverish, but it’s much better since he got the antidote and Jihun’s certain that he’ll make it. Together Seungcheol and Sunyeong carry Seokmin out into the Corridor, and Wonwoo comes around the corner to help after hearing the commotion.

“Oh my god, guys, I’m so happy you’re alive,” he says almost breathlessly.

Seungcheol orders Wonwoo to open the Classroom and he does. He’s met by a very confused but happily surprised Mingyu, who only stares at Wonwoo for a long moment, relieved to see him alive after thinking that he froze to death. Then Mingyu snaps back to reality and turns to Seungcheol.

“Hyung, the Bedroom. We have to get to Hansol and Jun fast!”

* * *

 

**THE BEDROOM**

Hansol looks up from Jun’s chest in tired surprise when the door swings open and a small light shines through. He hears the commotion of ten voices as the water starts to spill out in a flood into the Corridor outside, then the panicked cries of Mingyu and Seungcheol as they lay eyes on the two people inside—one lying motionless and pale on the bed, the other kneeling by his side holding his hand, eyes swollen and sleepy.

“Jun!”

Seungcheol rushes up, Wonwoo and Mingyu close behind. He hands the touchpad to Wonwoo and starts shaking Junhui, who is unresponsive. “Jun-ah. Jun-ah, come on, please.”

While looking with horror at the scene in front of him, Wonwoo notices that Hansol is smiling. Actually smiling.

“Hyung, it’s okay,” the younger says before Wonwoo can ask him. “I got it working.”

Seungcheol looks up, almost in panic again. “Got what working!?”

Hansol’s reply is a sigh of relief. “His heart stopped. I saved him. Jun is alive.”

Seungcheol, Wonwoo and Mingyu all stare at Hansol as if his words are in a foreign language. Then they turn to Junhui, who looks just about as dead as a person could look. It’s impossible to see with only the light of the touchpad, but when Seungcheol places his hand on Junhui’s chest he can feel it—breaths. They’re shallow and uneven, but he is breathing.

The oldest bends his head, letting out a shuddering sigh. “Oh, Junhui... Hansol, I don’t know what to say...”

“Don’t,” Hansol interrupts him. He smiles again, tired and content and a tiny bit proud. Seungcheol accepts that.

By now Seungkwan, Jihun and Jeonghan have also joined them. Jihun’s face is red and tense, as he forces the tears back, while Jeonghan has failed the same attempt. Wonwoo pulls Jeonghan into a comforting embrace, hiding the sobs that still rock his body.

“You should go outside, Hansol-ah,” Jeonghan says over Wonwoo’s shoulder. “Someone go with him.”

Seungkwan offers to go back and takes Hansol by the arm. Hansol is already tearing up again, from the shock and tire and fear. Everybody’s heart sinks when they hear Hansol’s reaction from the Corridor, both to seeing his friends alive and well, and to seeing Jisoo.

Seungcheol is so far beyond tired of this game that he can’t even attempt to comfort his heartbroken youngers. Instead, he takes Junhui’s hand and squeezes it, thanks him silently for being alive, and says nothing.

“We should go somewhere else,” Jihun says. “We have to take care of ourselves now when we have the chance. Seokmin’s still sick, Seungkwan’s badly injured, there’s water everywhere... we don’t know how Jun is... it’s a mess.”

“Where?” Seungcheol asks. His tone reeks of hopelessness. “We’re still trapped.”

“I have an idea,” Mingyu counters.

* * *

 

**THE CLASSROOM**

Using a plastic jug from the Butcher Room filled with water and the light of the touchpad, the room becomes sufficiently illuminated. They agreed that the Classroom is the best place to stay and regroup in since it has tables that can be made into makeshift beds and lots of chairs too. They’ve all donated as many clothes as they can spare to wrap Seokmin and Junhui in, and torn the rest of Seungcheol’s shirt to shreds and used it to wrap Seungkwan’s wounds, Chan’s leg and Hansol’s stomach. They’d placed Jisoo on the bed in the Bedroom—it is just too much to keep him with them. They also searched the entire house for more doors to see if they could find Minghao, but no luck. Their last missing member is nowhere to be found.

For over an hour they’ve been sitting quietly and still, just soaking in each other’s presence and trying to gather enough strength to continue the struggle. The remaining keys lay on the table in between them—six in total, not counting the broken ones. There’s also Mingyu’s notes and books, and the phone. Everybody’s staring at them, but nobody says anything.

That’s when Junhui wakes up.

“How’re you feeling?” Wonwoo asks once the happy surprise settles down.

Junhui grunts his reply, barely audible. “Like I was hit by a train. What happened?”

“You got shocked by the switch,” Hansol explains. “Cut the power in the entire building.”

With the headache of the century but otherwise just tired, Junhui joins the others in conversation. After having debriefed each other on the rooms and what they’ve been through, Mingyu takes the time to explain his theory.

“It’s all been a game so far, I think we’ve all figured that that out, but it’s more than that. When I talked to the guy on the phone he sounded angry, and I think that’s because Jun stopped the game by cutting the power. And according to my book, the third objective is to reunite. We’re all here now, so that has to mean that we’ve completed that objective and should be moving on to objective four.”

“We’re not all here, though,” Chan says. “Minghao-hyung’s still gone.”

“Are you sure you looked everywhere?” Junhui presses, worried about his little brother, and Seungcheol nods.

Mingyu continues. “I don’t think the game will continue until they get the power back on because they can’t control anything. But that still leaves Minghao... they threatened to kill him if I didn’t turn the power on by myself. I don’t know if I made the right choice...”

“We’ve all made choices and we’ve all done our best,” Jeonghan says. “Nobody blames you.”

Mingyu turns to Junhui for a moment, meets his eyes with his own. There’s judgement in them, but not in an unfriendly way. He understands, and he is forgiving. Mingyu is thankful for that.

“So what now?” Seungkwan asks. “How do we find Minghao and how do we get out of here?”

Nobody has an answer for that. In the silence that follows, when everyone’s trying to think of a solution, the phone starts to ring. The group of friends look at each other in tense expectation before Seungcheol answers and puts it on speaker.

“Yes?” he says.

The voice on the other end is not the kidnapper from before or even one of his accomplices. It’s weak, ragged and so very familiar.

“Hyung... hyung, can you hear me?”

Minghao.

Everyone gathers around, all tire and hopelessness vanished in a heartbeat. They shower their missing younger in questions, too excited to hear his voice to listen to how anxious it is.

“Stop, stop! Listen to me!” Minghao cries and his friends fall silent. “It’s not over yet. The game, they told me it has to continue or else...”

Static, silence, and beeping signals as the call ends. The group all stare at the phone as if it would somehow come alive and tell them what they just heard.

“Minghao!” Junhui yells although he knows that he can’t hear him. “Call the number again. Quickly!”

Seungcheol tries, but the phone is locked and can only receive calls without being unlocked first. Then the phone rings again, and Seungcheol picks up.

“Minghao-ya?”

Not this time. Mingyu recognizes the voice of their kidnapper instantly.

“I’ve given you what you wanted. Now, you have to do something for me in return. The game will continue, it's only a matter of time. You can’t stop it.”

“Who are you!?” Junhui roars. “Where is Minghao!?”

“Ah-ah-ah,” the voice replies scornfully. “For that info, you’ll have to play the game. Congratulations, by the way, for completing objective three. It’s very impressive.”

A shower or curses and threats escape the boys’ frustrated lips before they realise it’s not biting. Seungcheol eventually asks them to be quiet and sighs to himself.

“What do you want us to do?”

“Play the game! Complete the last objective. Save your friend. He’s been counting on you from the beginning.”

The call ends again, and this time it doesn’t ring again. A few minutes later, the lights flicker to life, the white noise buzzing of electronics returns and the screen at the front of the room comes back online. The boys hold their breaths, too tense and afraid to even move.

_함께 강해면 쌍으로 더 강해. 게임은 계속 될 거야. 이제 놀아._  
_(Together you are strong but in pairs, you are stronger. The game will continue. Now play.)_

Below it follows a list similar to the statistics, but different still.

**• Control Room •  
** **Seungcheol**

**• Locker Room •  
** **Junhui, Seokmin**

**• Mirror Room •  
** **Jihun, Hansol**

**• Interrogation Room •  
** **Seungkwan, Sunyeong**

**• The Butcher Room •  
** **Chan, Jeonghan**

**• The Boiler Room •  
** **Wonwoo, Mingyu**

The screen flashes, and the by now all too familiar countdown appears—times three. One says five minutes, the second says half an hour, and the third says two hours. A title above the clocks says ‘ _Objective 4: Escape_ ’.

Altogether, the countdowns start ticking.

* * *

**SHOULD THEY GO TO THEIR DESIGNATED ROOMS**

_or_

SHOULD THEY STAY IN THE CLASSROOM?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	14. Who Is In Control?

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

“You sure you understood everything I said?”

“Yes, Jeonghan, I got it.”

“Absolutely? And you know to stay away from the drawers.”

“Yes.”

“And the key. You got your key?”

Seungcheol doesn’t want to get annoyed with his friend, whom he knows is only worried and scared. But they are all scared, so his tone is a little harsh when he speaks. “Jeonghan, that’s enough.” Then he softens again when Jeonghan looks at him with big eyes. “I’ll be fine.”

Jeonghan looks like he wants to say something else, but doesn’t. Then Mingyu comes hurriedly from the Locker Room, the touchpad in hand. Behind him is Junhui crouching on the floor, with Seokmin’s still unconscious form resting on a locker bench.

“Two minutes,” Mingyu says. Seungcheol nods and gives a supportive press of his shoulder before he leaves.

Jeonghan doesn’t move though. “You should go too,” Seungcheol says.

“Don’t die. Please.”

Those are the last words Jeonghan says before exiting the Control Room. Seungcheol then closes the door after him according to the instructions—it feels horrible to do so. He also shares a heavy but supportive look with Junhui, coloured by the hint of a smile, before they too close the door between them.

Seungcheol’s smile vanishes—now he’s alone again. He turns into the leader, all doubt and fear running off of him. He turns to the screens behind him, one of which has the three countdowns on it. One minute left. Guided by Jeonghan’s words and the handbooks, he starts the control panels and activates the Communications System for all six rooms. Thankfully there are no issues. He can see everyone, and everyone can hear each other.

In almost complete, reverent silence, the first countdown hits zero. Metallic clicks echo in every room—the sound of the doors locking again.

Seungcheol takes a deep breath. “That’s it, guys, the game is on. Now let’s save Minghao and win this thing. We can do it. For Jisoo, and for all of us.”

* * *

 

**THE SMALL ROOM**

The ceiling opens for the second time, and this time Minghao is prepared. He bites and kicks at the arms holding him down, struggles like a rabid animal to get to the opening. But just like the first time, three people is just too many to fight off while lying on his back. Someone even puts their foot down through the opening and presses on his stomach. Someone manages to take the phone from him, and before he can do anything about it the large stone slab is moved back into place, closing up his tiny space again.

He screams. What was the point in giving him a phone and literally ten seconds to talk to his friends? He knows now that he is being used as bait, as a hostage. His friends are the players, and he is the prize.

The only positive thing is that the walls have been moved back to their original position, so he isn’t pressed against them. He has permanent marks on his knees and hips from how tight it had been towards the end, but now he can stretch a little. It’s when he does that he notices the difference in the concrete ceiling—a new message, and something taped to the surface.

_너도 선수야고 게임을 할 기회가 생길 거야._  
_(You’re a player too, and you will have your chance to play.)_

Underneath the tape is a white pill. He removes it and inspects it, but finds nothing. It’s not marked in any way, and he doesn’t recognise the shape. It could be a painkiller or dishwasher detergent for all he knew. The only hint he gets is a tiny text written underneath the tape he just removed.

_먹어._  
_(Eat it.)_

* * *

 

**THE LOCKER ROOM**

“So what’s the first step?” Seungkwan asks through the speakers. “The doors are locked but what now?”

Everyone can hear Mingyu rummaging through his books. “Everything I have is stuff that leads up to Objective Four, but nothing after that. So I don’t know actually.”

“Let’s start with what we know will work,” Seungcheol says doubtlessly. “Jun-ah, you’re up. You have the locker codes.”

“Already on it,” Junhui replies.

He’s comparing the numbers on the lockers to the name syllables that Jeonghan got before. He takes them one by one, slowly and carefully as to not make any mistakes, while the others listen in from their rooms. Four lockers are already open—Sunyeong’s, Jeonghan’s, Hansol’s and Junhui’s own. Seungcheol’s still requires a key, Sunyeong’s key, which he has with him in the Interrogation Room.

That leaves Jisoo’s, Chan’s, Wonwoo’s, Mingyu’s, Jihun’s and Seokmin’s lockers. Without reason or logic, he decides to go for Chan’s locker first, which requires his own name to open. His heart beats uncomfortably fast before he presses the side button, but the lock snaps open easily.

Inside is a pickaxe. An old, worn miner’s pickaxe. There’s a simple line of text carved into the wooden handle.

_너무 깊게 파지 마._  
_(Don’t dig too deep.)_

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hansol asks, but nobody knows.

Junhui has a vague idea, but the thought never surfaces. If it has something to do with Minghao, his subconscious saves him from the immense worry for now. He moves on to the next locker, which is Seungkwan’s, locked with Hansol’s name. The locker is empty of all but what looks like a crumpled up napkin at the bottom, red stained and still wet from when the room flooded. Junhui unfolds it and reads what’s written on it out loud. It’s hard to see since it’s wet and smudged, but he can do it.

_승관은 대답을 알고 있지만 준희는 열쇠를 있어._  
_(Seungkwan knows the answer, but Junhui has the key.)_

“Wait,” Jeonghan says after a while of thinking. “Seungkwan has the answer. Seungkwan-ah, is there anything in your room?”

“Not that we can see…” Seungkwan says while looking around.

“That locker was supposed to be open during Objective Three,” Mingyu cuts in. “I don’t think they mean Seungkwan, I think it’s—.”

* * *

 

**THE MIRROR ROOM**

Jihun looks behind him, makes sure Hansol is standing far enough away. Then he wraps the t-shirt tighter around his fist, pulls his arm back, and slams it as hard as he can into the mirror glass. It cracks and so does his knuckles. He gives a cry so shrill it sends feedback through the speaker systems. Then he hits it again, and once more until the mirror shatters and shards rain down over him.

“Hyung, you okay?” Hansol asks and brushes the shards out of his older’s hair. “Your hand.”

“I’m alright,” Jihun lies and looks up at the wall where the mirror was. This is the third mirror that has nothing behind it—no messages, no hidden cabinets, no nothing.

He prepares to smash the next mirror when Hansol stops him and steals the t-shirt from his hand. As much as Jihun wants to protect his younger, his hand hurts too much to refuse Hansol’s offer. Hansol wraps his own fist in the fabric and takes the mirror down with two quick hits.

He’s luckier than Jihun. The wall behind the mirror has a screen built into it, no bigger than a touchpad. Hansol touches it and it comes to life, showing what looks like a gaming app with an animated slot machine. A text that urges them to ‘pull the lever’ flashes at the bottom, and there’s an animated one right next to the machine.

Jihun explains to their blind friends what they found. “What do you think we should do? It says to play the game.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing so far?” Wonwoo mutters.

“Either way we have to hurry,” Seungcheol says with a discreet sigh. “We have five minutes before the next countdown ends. I don’t know what that— what the..?!”

The sudden scream of their oldest makes both Jihun and Hansol’s hearts skip a beat.

“What happened?” Jeonghan calls from his room.

“Don’t say you told me so, but one of the drawers in here just… poof!” Seungcheol says breathlessly. They listen to him struggle with the damaged drawer and exhale when he extracts its contents. “There’s a new note here. It says ‘ _Be in control, or the game will do it for you_ ’. I don’t—“

Seungcheol is interrupted a second time when a loud beep sounds through the speakers and the screens in every room that has one suddenly change to the second countdown. Only this time it has a title of its own—‘ _Boiler Room Trap_ ’—and a message below it.

_게임을 결정하게 하시겠거나 더 친구들을 죽이는 것과 살 수 있어?_  
_(Will you let the game decide, or can you live with condemning more friends to death?)_

“Guys…” Hansol starts carefully. “I think the slot machine is a randomizer. For the traps in our rooms.”

Seungcheol sighs, loudly this time. “I think you’re right. And I think the countdown is for the trap in the Boiler Room. Mingyu? Wonwoo?”

“Well, not to scare you all, but something in here just made a noise, and it’s getting very, very hot,” Mingyu says.

Hansol’s finger lingers in the air in front of the screen in the wall. Jihun is next to him, and they share an anxious look. The question settles in their minds and won’t leave them alone—can they bare making the decision on their own? And isn’t it cowardly to let a game make the choice for them just to keep their conscience clean?

“Two minutes,” Seungcheol reminds them.

* * *

SHOULD HANSOL AND JIHUN ACTIVATE THE BOILER ROOM TRAP

_or_

**SHOULD THEY RANDOMIZE THE SELECTION**

_(Winning option marked in bold font. Actual randomizer used.)_

 


	15. This Is Not A Joke

**THE MIRROR ROOM**

With head spinning and heart beating unevenly in his chest, Jihun nods to his younger, who with a hard swallow drags his finger across the screen to pull the lever. The app makes sounds like a slot machine and plays music, before all three of the turn wheels slow down and land on the same option.

_Boiler Room_.

 

Jihun and Hansol can’t believe what they’re seeing. Was it all just a trick, or were they really that unlucky? Then they remember that the unlucky ones aren’t them, safe in the Mirror Room...

“Mingyu! Wonwoo! It’s your room, be careful!” Hansol screams.

He hasn’t even finished the sentence before a sound like a dozen gunshots echo through the speakers, followed inevitably by the panicked cries of their two friends in the Boiler Room.

* * *

 

**THE BOILER ROOM**

Mingyu ducks away even before Hansol’s warning cry, somehow recalling a word he read in a note from the Classroom concerning the traps—pressurized. He’s not fast enough though. When the pressurized nuts and bolts from the boiler tanks themselves start flying like bullets, he takes a hit to the arm before he drops to the floor. He slides behind a pipeline and covers his head on instinct. Through the gap between his arms he spots Wonwoo, who is moving, but not in any logical direction. He kneels, slowly and then limply.

The spray of bolts only takes a few seconds, then the room falls into silence. Mingyu rushes out of his corner and skids up in front of Wonwoo, whose blank expression faces the floor.

“Hyung? You okay?” He examines his friend in search of injuries. There’s a scratch on his cheek and a rip in his shirt on the shoulder. “Wo-“

And there’s a bleeding hole in his chest. Wonwoo has his hand covering the wound, but it falls away. Mingyu only glances it before his friend collapses forward and he has to grab him to stop the fall. He ends up with Wonwoo’s head in his lap, teary eyes looking at him and mouth unable to form words.

“Wonwoo-hyung! Wonwoo-ya!” He keeps pressure on the wound, but there’s not much he can do like this.

Wonwoo loses strength fast. “My friend... it hurts...”

“I know, I know,” Mingyu stutters, ignoring the cascade of voices from the other rooms. “Focus on breathing. Okay? Don’t leave.”

“I won’t...” Wonwoo whispers. “I’m fine...”

The countdown hits zero on the touchpad screen that Mingyu brought with him, as well as everyone else’s screen. The ‘ _Statistics_ ’ page appears, and the last strike under Wonwoo’s name vanishes, replaced by the text ‘ _eliminated_ ’. Mingyu looks down at his hyung in panic, but Wonwoo’s still alive. Another message flashes by, one line at the time, and Mingyu reads carefully not to miss anything.

_단서 없음. 대상 없음. 게임에서 앞으로 건너 뛰는 것에 대한 처벌있어. 다시 시작해._   
_(No clues. No grand prize. This is your punishment for skipping forward in the game. Start over.)_

Mingyu doesn’t know what to do with this information. His very soul is boiling with hatred for the game and the people who are running it. He swears loudly, bites down on his tongue in frustration, then focuses his panicking mind on Wonwoo. His friend is doing what he’s told—breathing—as blood stains his shirt and Mingyu’s hands.

“Just stay with me, hyung. I won’t let you go. Ever.”

“Okay,” Wonwoo answers.

* * *

 

**THE MIRROR ROOM**

Now they don’t even care about protecting each other or being careful about the glass—Jihun and Hansol are breaking every single mirror they can until there’s not a single one left. They hope against hope that there’s something that will help them save Wonwoo, or at least open the doors again so that they can get to him.

What they do find is another message that refers to the Freezer Room, completely irrelevant now. Other than that, there’s nothing that could help Wonwoo and nothing about any ‘ _answers_ ’ that Seungkwan could have had when he was locked in there.

“Have you tried the ceiling?” Seungkwan says then. Jihun and Hansol look at each other—no, they haven’t.

Using the table that the glasses stood on, the two of them work together to try and fling the thing into the mirrored ceiling. After a few tiring tries, they succeed, and a large portion of it drops down on them. They escape with a few cuts and bruises and look up to find the fruit of their struggles.

A map. They realize that it depicts the house they’re in, with each of the six rooms they are currently in marked with red dots. The dots don’t look randomly placed, though. A few are on the walls, one is in the centre of a room and one is somewhere in a corner.

“Guys, I need you to listen carefully and follow my instructions,” Jihun says. “I think there’s something in all of our rooms that we need to find. Seungcheol, you first.”

Jihun guides Seungcheol to a part of the Control Room and has him search the area. It doesn’t take him long to find a red blotch of paint on the floor under a set of drawers.

“It’s a syllable,” he explains. “It says 북 (buk).”

One by one, the others find the red dots in their rooms, each one a different syllable—쪽, 룸, 벽 (ra, jjok, rum, bjeok). Hansol finds the Mirror Room one behind one of the mirrors they shattered, reading 라 (ra). Mingyu even leaves Wonwoo for a second to find the last syllable in his room, which is 커 (keo).

It’s not long before Jeonghan figures the message out.

“I think it’s supposed to be 라커룸 북쪽 벽 (Locker Room North Wall),” he says. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Jun-ah, is there anything in there along that wall?”

* * *

 

**THE BOILER ROOM**

Mingyu holds Wonwoo’s hand in one of his own now, the other still pressed to the wound in his chest but not too hard, because it makes it hard for Wonwoo to breathe. He is feeling the dread, the coldness of his heart even though the room is hot like an oven. He knows that his mind is preparing for the inevitable even though he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He can see it on the colour of his friend’s face, the laboured breaths, the red pools on the floor.

He hardly hears what the others are talking about.

“There’s nothing here, I swear,” Junhui says. “It’s just a white concrete wall.”

“I don’t remember seeing anything there either,” Sunyeong agrees. “You think there could be something behind it? We need to hurry, for Wonwoo’s sake.”

A tear rolls down Mingyu’s cheek. He doesn’t notice that he’s crying until Wonwoo squeezes his hand lightly.

“Mingyu-ya... I don’t think... I’m gonna make it...”

“No, no, no, no, you can’t talk like that. Don’t say that. I’m here. You’ll be fine, we’ll get out of here and we’ll get you some help. You’ll be okay.”

“No, I won’t...”

Who is Mingyu trying to kid? Himself? He can hear it in Wonwoo’s voice, feel it on his skin. Life is leaving him, and Mingyu is helpless to stop it.

“I want them... to listen to me...” Wonwoo whispers.

It takes all of Mingyu’s power of will to work through his heartbreak and nod. With the tears streaming and his voice shaky, he gets the attention of their other fiends.

“Guys, I... I need you to stop and listen to what Wonwoo has to say.”

“Wonwoo-hyung, you shouldn’t speak,” Chan counters worriedly. “Save your energy-”

“No, listen to him!” Mingyu exclaims. This is followed by complete silence, apart from Mingyu’s ugly, choked-down sobs and quiet crying from the other rooms. “I don’t... I don’t think we’ll get another chance.”

Respectfully, the entire group stays silent and listens. Wonwoo’s voice is low and weak even as he struggles to speak loud enough for everyone to hear.

“My friends... I... I want you to know that... I mean, I know... that you know... that I love you all... I love you, my brothers... my Hyung-nims... my dongsaengs... And I know that you can get out of here and that you can go on... you can live on... and me and Jisoo-hyung, we will... we will stay with you... forever...”

By the end of the speech, his voice is so low that only Mingyu can hear it. Mingyu does his best not to let the sorrow and despair get a hold on him, but it’s just too much to bear. When Wonwoo’s eyes fall shut for the last time and his chest stops moving, Mingyu still does not dare to make noise.

“Wonwoo-ya,” he breathes. No reply. “Wonwoo-ya...?”

Wonwoo can’t hear him.

* * *

 

**THE SMALL ROOM**

In periods of time that Minghao can’t keep track of, he shifts between being brave and patiently waiting for an opportunity to escape or be rescued, and absolute and utter panic. Right now, after a fit of screams and kicking uselessly against the walls and ceiling, he is in panic. He thinks about his friends, locked in rooms somewhere outside his own little prison, fighting against who knows what kind of dangerous situations. Minghao knows the stakes that their kidnappers put up, and that they won’t hold back on taking a life if they think their sick game requires it.

He thinks about his Hyungs. Will they be able to keep both themselves and their youngers safe? What kind of pressure is Seungcheol under? Is Junhui okay? Can Wonwoo and Sunyeong and Jeonghan make the right choices? He thinks about Hansol and Seungkwan, Seokmin and Mingyu—his brothers who could be in danger. He thinks about Chan, his only younger friend, and if he’s even still alive.

And he thinks about the pill and the message on his ceiling. An invitation to join the game. He could be a part of it too, or he could continue to be a bait for his friends to desperately follow.

This is his chance to affect the game. The question is how. The only thing he has is a pill and a note that tells him to eat it.

This is it.

The 8th dilemma.

* * *

**SHOULD MINGHAO EAT THE PILL**

_or_

SHOULD HE DESTROY IT?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	16. Minghao Is A Player Too

**THE SMALL ROOM**

At the end of all his thinking and debating, Minghao still knows better than anyone else that right now, their kidnappers are in charge. If he wants to survive, he has to play they game by their rules. Once they are outside of these walls, they can start thinking for themselves again. But until then, Minghao knows what he needs to do.

Although it’s hard without water to swallow it with, Minghao puts the unidentifiable pill on his tongue and quickly ingests it. A foul taste follows in his mouth, downright nasty. Then he turns around to find another comfortable position in the tiny space and waits to find out what he just did to himself.

It doesn’t take long at all. After only a few minutes Minghao starts feeling... weak. Tired, but not as in sleepy. His head feels light but his body becomes heavy, and he realizes that his heartbeat is slowing down. Even when he becomes scared and stressed about it, his heart does not speed up again.

Just before he passes out, he hears a click similar to when the kidnappers opened the ceiling before, but nobody opens it this time. Minghao tries to move the concrete slab, but he’s much too weak.

He wonders if he’ll ever be found if he dies in this coffin.

* * *

 

**THE CONTROL ROOM**

Mingyu’s wailing, that could be heard across all channels, has finally stopped. For half an hour he hugged Wonwoo’s motionless body, calling his name and rocking back and forth. Now it’s quiet. Almost everyone has sunken to the floor, either in shocked disbelief or by the weight of grief. Seungcheol is still standing by the control panel watching and listening to his friends, and unwillingly observing the passing of time on the two-hour countdown—the last of the three they got—as it passes one hour. One hour left to... something. Seungcheol doesn’t want to think about it, but he has no choice. He can’t let Wonwoo’s last wish just become sad words of goodbye.

“Everyone,” he says carefully, voice still uneven from trying to stop the sobs. “You heard what he said. We need to get out of here. The game is still on, and the countdown-“

“I don’t care about their sick games!” Mingyu roars. “I’ll kill them!”

Seungcheol grants Mingyu another minute of silence minute to calm down, but when he prepares to speak, Sunyeong beats him to it. “Mingyu-ya. He’s right. Wonwoo would’ve wanted us to escape alive. He wouldn’t want anyone to... to die for him.”

The silence stretches on, reverent and almost tangible. But when it finally breaks, it’s not by a voice that anyone expects.

“What happened? Where am I?”

It’s Seokmin.

* * *

 

**THE LOCKER ROOM**

Junhui rushes over the second he realizes that Seokmin is awake, and helps his younger sit up on the bench.

“Seokmin-ah, is that you?” Jeonghan calls over the speakers.

“Are you okay?” Junhui asks.

Seokmin holds his head in his hands, looking tired and pale like a ghost. “It’s me. I’m fine.” Unconvincing.

Junhui takes one of the hoodies they wrapped Seokmin in and helps him put it on, then crouches in front of him. Short on time, his friends try to explain everything that has happened since Seokmin fell unconscious again. All the while trying their best to not break under the fact that they’ll have to tell him why he can’t hear Jisoo and Wonwoo among their voices.

“Seokmin-ah...” Seungcheol starts eventually. “These traps, they’re deadly. You almost died, Jun too, and Jisoo... he and Wonwoo...”

He can’t hear himself say the words, but he does say them, and he can hear Seokmin’s reaction. He questions them, cries into Junhui’s t-shirt, wants them to swear that it’s a lie.

“Wonwoo wanted us to get out of here. Those were his last words,” Mingyu says.

Suddenly Seokmin pulls away from Junhui’s embrace and looks at him with big, almost crazy eyes. “What?” Junhui asks him.

“We have to get out of here. They told me how.”

“How?” Junhui exclaims, his heart skipping a beat.

Seokmin’s mouth falls open, stuttering as if to remember something super important. “The exit... it’s not somewhere you’d expect an exit to be. That’s what they said... it’s in the ceiling.”

Not half a second after he utters the words, a new beep sounds through the speaker systems, alerting the boys to a change on their screens. Junhui twists around and Seokmin looks up to the TV. What they see is as painful to Junhui as a knife through his heart.

“弟弟!” he cries out and flies to his feet, grabbing the TV by the edges. “Minghao!”

It’s a photo—or is it a live feed?—from inside a crammed space, and Minghao is lying on his side. His eyes are closed and he’s not moving, no matter how much Junhui screams at him to.

Jisoo’s pale cheeks. Wonwoo’s last words. And now Minghao. There’s not a doubt in Junhui’s heart that his young friend could be dead already.

“Junhui, stop screaming, it’s not helping!” Seungcheol orders him. “What does the message say? I can’t see it on my screens.”

Junhui takes a second to calm down, although his heart is racing in his chest. There is a message on his screen, Seungcheol can probably see it by the cameras in the room, but Seokmin is quicker to read it aloud.

 _모든 단서를 발견했으므로 지금 그들은 단합시켜야 할 때._  
_(You have found all the clues, so now it’s time to put them together.)_

“What clues?” Sunyeong asks. “The whole ‘Seungkwan has the answer but Junhui has the key’ thing?”

“The north wall,” Jihun says, the message Jeonghan translated.

Junhui stares into thin air, let’s all the pieces fall into place. When it clicks for him, fear and worry transform into a flaming determination.

“Don’t dig too deep,” he repeats the message from the shaft of the pickaxe. “Mingyu-ya! Next to the Locker Room, on your map, was there any other room?”

“No, I don’t think so. Just an unmarked square. It didn’t have any doors.”

Junhui knows where Minghao is. He’s sure of it—so sure that when he grabs the pickaxe from the locker and starts hacking into the north wall of the Locker Room, he doesn’t stop. He screams with every hit, puts so much force into it that he’s afraid the tool will break. And it takes forever. Seokmin offers to help but is in no way strong enough to break the concrete.

When Junhui is sweating and his hands are a few more swings from starting to bleed, the bottom of the hole he’s created breaks and reveals a dark cavity. He swings again, chipping away until the whole is large enough to see through.

He doesn’t need to look inside because Seokmin points to the TV screen and Minghao’s image. There’s a new light source by the boy’s head that wasn’t there before—light from the Locker Room.

“Minghao!” Junhui yells and starts hacking again.

“Careful!” Seokmin tells him. “You’ll hit his head!”

Junhui continues, a little more careful but still as fast as he can. Eventually, the whole is big enough to squeeze through, and Junhui can see Minghao’s bleached locks. He throws the pickaxe away and reaches inside, grabbing Minghao by the shoulders of his shirt and pulling him out of the small space.

“弟弟! Minghao! Come on, 弟弟! 请不要!”

Junhui cradles the thin frame of Minghao in his lap, slaps his cheeks lightly and shakes him to wake him up. But the younger doesn’t show any signs that he can hear him. Seokmin kneels beside them and tries to help, but neither his Korean or Junhui’s Chinese reaches through.

“No! No, no, no! Minghao! You can’t. 哥哥 is here. You can’t leave me!”

Junhui can’t hear his friends. He can’t see Seokmin. He can hardly see Minghao through the tears. But then Seokmin’s hands are on his arms, and his loud calls pierce the haze of grief and despair.

“Hyung! He’s alive! Jun-hyung, listen to me!”

When Junhui finally reacts, he’s holding Minghao so tight it should have hurt.

“Let go, hyung, you’ll strangle him.”

Jun releases his grip a little, and Seokmin shows him by putting Junhui’s hand to Minghao’s nose. They are way too far apart to be healthy, but Minghao’s breaths blow air onto his skin. The heat is like a drug to Junhui, and he exhales in relief so deep it makes him cry again.

Thankfulness sweeps through every room, nice but short-lived. Seungcheol can’t pull his eyes away from the third countdown, which has six minutes left.

“Guys, there’s almost no time left. Is there anything else in where Minghao was? Another clue?”

Since Junhui still won’t let go of his unconscious friend, Seokmin decides to crawl into the Small Room himself. It’s a tight fit since he’s much bigger than Minghao, but he manages to squeeze in. Written on the concrete ceiling he finds the messages for Minghao, but there is nothing else.

 _The exit is in the ceiling_.

That’s what they told him in the speakers when he woke up in the Interrogation Room before the poison kicked in. The ceiling. Seokmin attempts to push upwards and expects the concrete to stay in place.

It moves easily, as if on wheels.

What he emerges into is a small square of a room, just as concrete and empty as most of the other ones. Seokmin climbs out of the coffin-like square he’s in and looks around in wonder.

* * *

 

**THE EXIT ROOM**

There are no windows, no doors, nothing on the floor or the ceiling. The only thing that gives the space any meaning at all is a small metal plate on one wall, with five holes that look like keyholes in it and a message engraved above them.

 _마지막 문을 열기 위해 무엇을 기꺼이합니까?_  
_(What are you willing to do to open the Last Door?)_

From inside the Locker Room, Seokmin can hear that Seungcheol is talking. Seokmin crawls back quickly and explains what he has found.

* * *

**The Control Room**

Seungcheol is boiling inside. The countdown is ticking away from them, every minute left becoming more precious. But the thing that bothers him more now is the new message that stretches across the entire bottom line of screens in front of him. With the information from Seokmin about the room he found, the message only becomes even more rage-fuelling.

 _키가 6 개 있지만 다시 만나기 위해서는 두 키가 필요해. 탈출 할 모든 트랩을 활성화하거나 키를 사용할 수 있어. 결정해._  
_(You have six keys but you need only two to reunite. Will you activate all traps to escape, or will you use those keys? Decide.)_

Seungcheol feels that something is off. Seokmin told him there are five keyholes, so they need five keys. There were supposed to be thirteen keys to begin with, that’s what they’d been told by Mingyu’s books. How many have they used so far? And in what way will just two keys help them reunite when they are all locked in different rooms?

The countdown hits two minutes remaining. The other option is to activate all the traps, and the doors will open. Can all of them be fast enough to get to the Locker Room in time if the traps are set off?

Seungcheol knows that the decision is all of theirs.

* * *

SHOULD THEY ACTIVATE ALL TRAPS

or

**SHOULD THEY USE THEIR KEYS?**

_(Winning option marked in bold font. This choice was special because at least one of the readers had to figure out HOW using the keys would help before I would let them go with that option. My loyal commenter and friend Elladee on Carat Amino managed to figure it out.)_

 

 


	17. SPECIAL CHAPTER #2

Continuing the pattern from Special Chapter #1, here follows a line-up of what would have happened if the readers had chosen differently...

 

> **CHAPTER NINE**

**Winning option: Mingyu activates Jeonghan’s channel**

This allows Mingyu to talk to Jeonghan, Sunyeong, Hansol and Junhui, and tell them his information.

**Other options: He activates Seungcheol’s channel OR Seungkwan’s channel.**

Activating Seungcheol’s channel would have allowed Mingyu to guide Seungcheol’s next decision. Activating Seungkwan’s channel would have allowed for a much earlier reveal of the Syllable Chart, and Minghao’s location.

 

> **CHAPTER TEN**

**Winning option: Seungcheol opens the Mirror Room with Jisoo’s key**

This saves Seungkwan and Wonwoo from the Mirror bomb, but allows Junhui to make the jump that both cuts the power and electrocutes him.

**Other option: Seungcheol opens the Bathroom.**

Doing this would have prevented Junhui’s jump and the game would have never been cut. Seungkwan and Wonwoo would be caught in the Mirror trap, which would have blinded Seungkwan completely and seriously injured them both, putting their survival on the line with the next decision.

 

> **CHAPTER ELEVEN**

**Winning option: Mingyu refuses to turn the power back on**

This allows the boys to reunite through their unlocked doors and skip ahead in the game, although it directly causes the retribution that follows the dilemma in Chapter 13.

**Other options: Mingyu turns the power back on**

The boys would have been unable to reunite since the doors are locked, and the struggle to reunite would have continued. Jihun’s puzzle would have started, and Minghao’s The 8th Dilemma would have happened sooner and differently.

 

> **CHAPTER TWELVE**

**Winning option: They go to their designated rooms**

This allows the game to restart, and the Fourth Objective begins. Retribution by random selection becomes inevitable.

**Other options: They stay in the Classroom**

This would have activated the Classroom trap, which involves fire. Many of the boys would have been injured and you would have lost Chan, as well as very badly burning Jeonghan. They would have lost Mingyu’s books, but the Retribution by Random Selection would have never happened.

 

> **CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

**Winning option: Randomize the selection/activate the Boiler Room Trap**

Since the selection ended on the Boiler Room, Wonwoo would have died either way, and Mingyu loses a strike. No clues or leads are given for this trap.

**Other options: The selection ends up on another option**

Had the randomizer chosen any other room with a one-strike person in it (Chan, or Junhui/Seokmin) those people would have died by the same principle as Wonwoo did. Had it ended up in a “safe room”, for example, Seungcheol in the Control Room, nobody would have died but there’s be seriously bad injuries that could have meant death in the following choice.

 

> **CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

**Winning option: Minghao eats the unknown pill**

Doing this causes Minghao’s heart rate to slow down until he’s as close to death as can be without dying, and he stays in the concrete coffin for Junhui to find and save.

**Other options: Minghao destroys the pill**

Had he done this, the kidnappers would have taken him out of the concrete coffin and away from the game rooms. Junhui would have found an empty coffin and the Exit Room, and Minghao would have been used once more as a bait/hostage in what follows when the boys escape the game.

* * *

**THE REAL GAME**

Minghao was nervous—Junhui could see that from a mile away. It was nice to see him tremble in the face of something for a change, but it was also not okay. After all, this was supposed to be a game show, but now that they stood here awaiting the start of filming, all any of them wanted to do was go back home.

Lee Hanryuk approached them, clapping his hands together once and sporting the same excited smile he had when he’d showed them to the recording studio. “Everyone warmed up and ready to go?”

Sunyeong replied in a most anticipating manner, but his face fell away as soon as director Lee left them again. As the leader of the three present members and himself, he didn’t like this at all.

The game show had been described to them as a survival game, with a high physical requirement and a lot of exciting intellectual elements. The concept of the obstacle course with traps and stressful countdowns was not a new thing, but the show itself had never aired—mostly due to the fact that on their very first recording, a female idol injured herself so badly that she eventually had to leave her group. That was years ago and the production team of the game show had struggled to get another k-pop group to participate. When finally Pledis agreed to send the Performance Unit of the recently debuted Seventeen to participate, they had expected drastic changes in the game’s dangerous and straining layout.

As far as the four boys could see, that hadn’t happened. There were long jumps on hard and uneven surfaces, a high risk of falling without safety lines in many areas, and even a game that involved live electric wires that supposedly “only stings you a little”. Nothing that sparked like that could ever just sting.

It didn’t look like fun or variety-show-like in any way. But since they knew that they sometimes had to do things they didn’t want to do because they were idols, they figured they’d just struggle through it. Sunyeong initiated the Performance Team cheer right after filming started, and divided the unit into two duos—the Maknaes and the Hyungs. After a short interview and explanation of the obstacle course that they already knew, the Maknaes were chosen to go first. Sunyeong didn’t really like the idea, had much rather gone first himself to try the dangers of the course, but the Game Host, an eccentric man named Kook Kangho, insisted.

It was almost ridiculous how fast the game proved itself too dangerous and risky. Chan lost grip on the first climbing wall and fell straight down onto the hard plastic floor, losing his breath for a while and hitting his head. Minghao went on since the game was on a timer and came to the high jump.

He knew how to do such a jump. He focused, prepared himself, and ran over the ledge with perfect form. But since the ground was uneven and the plastic slippery, he lost his footing in the landing and crashed.

Junhui and Sunyeong didn’t care that they were filming and ran up to him. He was okay apart from a few lightly bleeding burns on his legs where he’d skidded across the plastic, and his hip had taken a blow. Chan’s back was hurting from his fall, too, and it was decided then and there.

Junhui asked for filming to stop, which it for some reason hadn’t the second Minghao crashed, and Sunyeong asked to talk with the leaders of the production team, which was Lee Hanryuk, Kook Kangho and the cameraman named Kim Yeongdong. He told them that they wouldn’t finish the filming, kindly and politely asking their forgiveness for the sudden decision although, in reality, he wanted to just take his teammates and walk out the door.

Hanryuk’s reaction was not nearly as sympathetic as they’d hoped. He struggled for a full half-hour to convince the boys to continue, to start the game over. They refused. During this time Junhui had to call for medical aid by himself because the production crew offered none. When even one of the sound guys came up and asked Hanryuk to stop and let the boys leave, Sunyeong realized that there really was a disturbed man they were dealing with. Hanryuk stormed off, shortly followed by both Kangho and Yeongdong. Some others from the production team helped the Seventeen members until an ambulance came to pick them up, most of them condemning the game show and its producers.

Chan needed a few days rest and was back to normal. Minghao got his scratches treated and was b-boying as if nothing had happened within a week. Pledis sued the company behind the game show and won easily—that was the end of that dangerous show for good. After a new comeback and a few months of promotion, the members of Seventeen had completely forgotten about that one time on a game show that never aired.

Two years later, one of the windows of their vacation home is busted open...

 


	18. The Game Ends

**THE LOCKER ROOM**

“I don’t know what to do, guys,” Seungcheol sighs over the speakers. “We can’t risk another trap, and definitely not all of them. But we only have six keys.”

The countdown is at one minute, forty-five seconds. Everyone feels the pressure, and Seokmin goes through every possible angle even though he knows very little of what’s happened while he was unconscious. Junhui has no help to offer—he is cradling the still deathly pale and motionless Minghao in his arms.

“Quickly, everyone who has a key, say it,” Jeonghan calls. “We might have counted wrong.”

Sunyeong, Seungkwan, Junhui, Seungcheol, Jeonghan and Jihun all confirm. That’s when a thought hits Seokmin, a vague memory of that short time he was awake and feverishly trying to get out of the Interrogation Room. He thinks he had something in his hand when he collapsed on the floor...

“Sunyeong-hyung, Seungkwan-ah! Look on the floor, I think my key is supposed to be there!”

Almost immediately, Sunyeong calls out in celebration. “Found it! That’s seven keys!”

“And guys, I got it!” Mingyu exclaims. “The switchboard in the Classroom, we could turn the power off again.”

“You sure about that, hyung?” Seungkwan asks.

“Do it,” Seungcheol orders. “Sunyeong-ah, you and Seungkwan are the only ones who have enough keys to do it. So go!”

* * *

 

**THE INTERROGATION ROOM**

The stress is so high that Sunyeong’s still hurting wrists make his fingers tremble. He inserts his own key into the door to the Corridor and is about to bawl his eyes out when it breaks inside the lock. But the door clicks and opens as if it’s not the key but some signal inside it that controls the lock. He doesn’t stop to think about it, but shoots across the Corridor with Seungkwan on his tail, and does the exact same thing with the Classroom door and Seungkwan’s key. It opens easily and the key breaks.

“Thirty seconds, hurry!” Seungcheol tells them.

“The panel above the front door, the one by the teacher’s desk,” Mingyu directs them.

Using a chair and some quick thinking, Sunyeong forcefully pushes the ceiling panel aside right above the door and finds a small, metallic panel with three switches on it. They are marked but he doesn’t read them—with one clean motion he flicks them all together, and everything around him dies.

Three seconds of dead silence pass, long and anxious, before the doors in the Corridor squeak open one by one. Seungkwan fumbles in the dark, finds Sunyeong’s hands and helps him down from the chair.

“Guys, where are you?” echoes Seungcheol’s voice.

It’s so pitch black that it disorients Sunyeong completely—he can’t even find the door he was right next to a second ago. But soon the light of Mingyu with the touchpad comes to their rescue, and they hurry after him.

* * *

 

**THE EXIT ROOM**

It takes two people and a whole lot of blind struggle to get Minghao through the busted-open coffin and into the Exit Room. But once he’s safe and hanging unconsciously from Junhui’s back and everyone else is gathered in the small space, Mingyu shines the light of the touchpad on the metal panel in the wall. Junhui, Jeonghan, Seungcheol, Seokmin and Jihun present their keys, the last five remaining, and insert them into each of the five keyholes.

Together, nervously, they turn the keys. They snap off, almost simultaneously.

A sound like a stone slab being moved punches their eardrums, so loud and close that it makes them duck their heads on instinct. Mingyu turns the touchpad upwards, and once the sound ends everyone looks up too.

Seokmin whistles in awe. “The exit is in the ceiling...”

A square opening, just as pitch black as the rest of the house, has opened above their heads. He doesn’t make sense that it would have moved on his own if the power was out—did someone pull it away? Anxious to get out of there before any new surprises come to get them, Seungcheol makes a stir-up with his hands and helps his members reach the hole and climb up one by one. They all help to get Minghao up too, who shows no sign of waking up anytime soon. Lastly, Mingyu and Hansol grab Seungcheol’s arms and pull him up.

They can’t see because it’s so dark, but they can hear from the echoes that the new space is very large. Seungcheol takes the lead with the group behind him and the touchpad in hand and starts creeping forward slowly. He doesn’t trust this...

Suddenly the lights come on all at once, so bright that it reminds him of a concert stage. All eleven of them cover their hurting eyes, blinder now in the light than in the darkness.

When Seungcheol finally manages to squint a little, he immediately sees the three figures that are standing some distance away from them. Two middle-aged men and one older one in the middle. They look ordinary, plain, not scary, but the older one is smiling creepily.

“No way...” Sunyeong breathes.

“You have to be kidding me,” Junhui follows.

“You’re the... those guys from the game show,” Chan finishes.

Seungcheol’s memory struggles to put the pieces together, but he’s not fast enough. One of the middle-aged men, the taller of the three, lifts his hand towards the group. There’s something in it that Seungcheol can’t identify while still squinting.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he says. “Welcome to Level 2.”

The object in his hand is a gun, and he fires it without hesitation or even a change in his expression.

Seungcheol flies backwards onto his friends, hand covering the hole just created over his heart.

* * *

 

**THE RECORDING STUDIO**

Absolute chaos erupts instantly, as several of the shrillest screams imaginable fill the large studio. Chan and Hansol both run towards the three men like rabid dogs, but stop when the tall man turns his gun on Chan. Jeonghan and Jihun are on their knees on either side of their leader, putting pressure on the wound that is bleeding fast.

“Seungcheol-hyung! Stay awake now! Don’t move, we got you!”

The three men don’t seem to care about the panic, the crying or the blood spilling on their floor. They seem untouched by what they just did—just like they were untouched by what they did to Jisoo and Wonwoo.

“You self-important rats don’t even remember our names, do you?” the older man says.

“You were the director of that game show we were on two years ago,” Chan says with a trembling voice and rage full tears in his eyes. His hands are raised against the gun still aimed at his face. “This is the studio we recorded in, hmm... Kook...eun...”

“Lee Hanryuk,” the oldest man introduces himself. He points to his two colleagues. “Kook Kangho and Kim Yeongdong. A pleasure to see you again, Lee Chan. It’s been a long time.”

The tall one, Kim Yeongdong, doesn’t lower the gun even a centimetre. Last time his aim was this focused on Chan, there was a camera involved instead of a weapon.

“Why!?” Sunyeong exclaims from behind them, looking away from Seungcheol’s bleeding form with red-cried eyes. “How could you do this to us!? How!?”

“You made us lose everything!” Hanryuk roars suddenly, spit flying. “Everything we built and dreamt and hoped for! Gone! Because THAT BRAT-“ He points a finger at Minghao, unconscious on the floor behind Junhui, “-got a scratch on his leg!”

“So you killed people!?” Mingyu roars back. “You killed our friends because of that!? You’re insane!”

“I know...” Hanryuk says, surprisingly calm, with a creepy smile on his face. “How else could I think this is fun?”

Chan and Hansol don’t dare move. Seungcheol is bleeding out fast and has lost consciousness in Jeonghan’s arms, his friends gathered around him and calling his name desperately. Several of them want to storm the men—after all, they are ten to three, but all they can see is the barrel of the gun aimed at their youngest, and it locks them in place.

“It will be the grandest show ever aired!” Hanryuk boasts loudly as if to a huge crowd. “The members of Seventeen all fighting for their lives against actual danger, their fans glued to the screens hoping that their favourites make it to the end. It’s genius, and never done before!”

This continues, the heartbroken and frightened Seventeen members losing hope and sanity by the second just listening to the monologue. They were kidnapped, struggled for their lives, lost friends and almost died themselves because of a game... and they were filmed doing it? It’s more than they can handle...

The situation is so otherworldly and cruel that nobody notices the movements in the back of the group. Slowly but surely, the commotion has woken Minghao up, and through the haze and the weakness of his body, he understands what has happened. This is Level 2. This is the round they won’t win, the one that the kidnappers told Minghao about when they dragged him through the Recording Studio and locked him in the Small Room.

This is where we get rid of the evidence. This is where you all die.

No. Minghao can’t let that happen. He won’t. So even though he can hardly stand properly, he crawls away from his friends and disappears behind a piece of the obstacle course that surrounds them. He finds the place he’s looking for, a climbing wall, and uses the ladder on the side meant for the camera crew to get all the way up. Nobody sees him, not until he has dragged himself all the way to the edge of the platform and peeks out over it.

Junhui sees the movement out of the corner of his eye, and he catches Minghao’s eyes with his own. He shakes his head discreetly, sends mental messages to his younger that pleads with him not to do what he plans to do. They’ve seen the results of this jump before, and it’s not pretty.

This is the exact same ledge he jumped from when he was playing their game—the original game. If you think about it through facts only, the reason they’re all here now is because Minghao failed at this jump two years ago.

He won’t fail this time. Whatever he does, he will stop these horrors once and for all.

* * *

**SHOULD MINGHAO TAKE THE JUMP**

_or_

SHOULD HE CREATE A DISTRACTION?

_(Winning option marked in bold font.)_

 


	19. What Happened To Us?

**THE RECORDING STUDIO**

Junhui is afraid that if he tries to shake his head at Minghao again, the kidnappers will notice him and shoot at him. But the discreet, pleading stares don't cut it—Minghao drags himself closer to the edge of the platform anyway, then uses the grips of a climbing wall to stand up on shaky legs.

Hanryuk’s monologue continues unendingly. He’s starting to sound like a pure maniac, someone who couldn’t possibly have come up with this advanced game by himself, as he goes on about how all Kpop fans will overthrow him with requests about putting other groups in the game. Most of the boys have stopped listening, but there’s little more they can do than listen. Chan is still at gunpoint, Hansol standing too far away to help in any way. The rest of them are sitting or standing around Jeonghan, who is sitting with Seungcheol’s head in his lap. They haven’t processed it yet, but their leader took his last breath several minutes ago.

That’s the view the kidnappers are so crazily focused on right now—not the slender figure looming over their heads, positioning himself as close to the gun-wielding Yeongdong as he can. Junhui can see what Minghao is planning, and it makes his heart contract.

“So,” Hanryuk says suddenly, in a much calmer tone than he’s used so far. “I think that’s enough bad guy’s exposition for this time. Let’s clean up this mess.”

He nods to Yeongdong. Minghao throws himself from the platform. A gunshot echoes through the studio, but the mixed commotion makes it unclear of where it hits. Minghao crashes straight onto Yeongdong and takes them both down to the floor, making the gun slip from the man’s hand and slide across the floor. Kangho jumps for it, but Hansol is quicker. He manages to stand up and aim the gun, holding it confidently enough to convince Kangho that the boy knows how to use it, although he’s never held a weapon in his life. Hansol backs away so that Kangho can’t swat the gun from his hands, then aims it at Hanryuk instead.

The older man only smiles. “You won’t use that.”

The tension in Hansol’s body mixed with hatred for these men makes him pull the trigger, landing a shot into the floor close enough to Hanryuk’s feet to spray plastic splinters onto his pants. Now Hanryuk raises his hands slowly, Kangho too, and when Yeongdong manages to throw Minghao off of him he stands up on his knees and raises his hands too.

The cameraman assesses the situation in a split second, seeing the gun, the boy lying next to him and the older boy rushing towards him. He decides that it’s not over yet, and pulls Minghao back up and towards him. Positioning the thin boy between him and Hansol, he makes sure that Hansol’s new aim stops him from firing, then he wraps his arm tightly around Minghao’s throat.

“Let him go!” Hansol cries out, waving the gun. Junhui, the boy who ran towards them, has frozen in place.

Yeongdong tightens his hold, closing Minghao’s windpipe. The boy squirms against the hold, makes choked screams, but he’s still much to weak to fight the hold.

“Let him go!” Hansol screams again, so loud his voice cracks.

Yeongdong only smiles creepily, almost possessed, and chokes Minghao even harder. Junhui can’t stand there and do nothing. He hears footsteps behind him, Sunyeong’s footsteps, and rushes into action. There’s nothing Yeongdong can do to stop them, and when Kangho attempts to rush in and help, Hansol’s aims the gun at him again.

Yeongdong is strong, and he holds on to the boy with everything he’s got. Minghao sees stars flying by his blurring vision, feels consciousness leave him like liquid from an upside down bottle. He’s locked in place as Junhui and Sunyeong wrestle with Yeongdong, tearing at his arms to let go. Minghao manages to draw a struggled breath, but it’s not fast enough. Just as the hold on his throat releases and he is pulled away from the wrestling match by someone—Mingyu?—the darkness closes in around him and everything is blocked out. Sight blurs to nothing, sound becomes too distant to distinguish, and touch fades from his spectrum. It doesn’t feel like he’s dying, but it scares him none the less. He never truly falls asleep, which makes the nightmare feel so much more real.

He spends what feels like an eternity in that state of nothingness, between sleep and wake, life and death. Then, slowly, sound and sight and touch start to become clear again, and as he realizes this, the process becomes faster.

He’s wide awake before he knows it, screaming at the top of his lungs and thrashing. He stares upwards but can’t see anything, and when he tries to sit up he hits his head and falls back down. Confused and still jumpy, he feels with his hands above him.

Concrete.

He’s back where he started.

* * *

 

**THE SMALL ROOM**

“No! No, no, no!”

He’s wild now, refuses to believe that they went through all that torment and struggle just to end up back here. Where are his friends? Are they still alive? Has the game been turned back on and the traps activated to teach them a lesson?

Minghao is so lost in his own drugged hallucinations and thoughts that he barely notices when the ceiling is pulled away and four pairs of hands reach inside and grab him. When he does notice he fights them, tooth and nail, desperate to save himself from further harm.

“Calm down, son!”

“We’re trying to help, but you have to cooperate!”

“He’s not listening to us. Quick, get the medics in here!”

“Has anyone found the others yet? There’s supposed to be thirteen missing!”

“I know this one, my daughter really likes him.”

“Is this really the time and place for that!?”

“Sorry.”

“Chief, I think we’ve found a way in!”

Minghao barely registers any of this. He’s too busy trying to get away from this new threat. But their hold is too strong and well planned—he can’t get anywhere on his own. Just as he’s about to give up, something like a needle is inserted into his arm and a calmness comes over him. Then the world is pulled away from underneath his feet, and he falls. Deeper and deeper until he’s asleep.

•

•

•

**A HOSPITAL ROOM**

The next time Minghao wakes up he’s much calmer about it. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s lying on something comfortable thing time, if it’s the buzzing of familiar voices around him or if he’s been drugged with some sedative as to not rip someone to shreds the second consciousness returns to him. Either way, he opens his eyes slowly and just looks around sleepily. Everything he sees is off, very off, but in the best way possible.

The small, white hospital room is crammed with people all standing around his bed. His friends, not all of them, but many—Jeonghan on a chair by his side holding his hand, Chan and Seungkwan standing behind him, Seungcheol by the foot of the bed and Sunyeong and Mingyu on the other side.

“Hey...” Minghao wheezes.

“How’re you feeling?” Seungcheol asks, a tired smile on his face.

“Like my head’s been smashed between two rocks,” Minghao replies. Which, according to the nature of the Small Room, wasn’t that far off.

His friends laugh at his dark joke.

Jeonghan squeezes his hand lightly. “The police will want to know that you’re awake so that they can get a statement, but we’ll stay in here a little while longer so you can rest. Is that alright?”

“They got us out,” Minghao notes simply.

“Yes. They got us all out of that horrible place.”

Minghao smiles and leans back on the soft, fluffy pillow. Finally, he can relax. But then the memories start to come back, slowly unblurring before his inner eye, and his smile fades. He opens his eyes again, looks at Seungcheol.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Seungcheol replies. “A little sore around the neck but otherwise I’m okay. My room wasn’t all that bad compared to many of the others.”

Minghao is confused. “But they shot you...”

“Shot me? Why’d you say that? I was never shot.”

Minghao has all the pieces to put the answer together, but the images in his mind are too vivid. He panics instead.

“But they did, I saw you bleed. The recording studio, and you, Chan, I think they shot you too... Jisoo-hyung... and Wonwoo-hyung! They killed them! They said that they had killed them!”

Three pairs of hands are on him the second he tries to sit up, and the collective calmness of his friends’ voices make him lay back down.

“Easy now, Minghao-ya,” Sunyeong says. “I don’t know what they told you but we’re fine, all of us.”

Jeonghan squeezes his hand again, a comfortable warmth. “It was a little touch-and-go for Jisoo and Wonwoo but they will make it. Jisoo was so dehydrated and Wonwoo was locked in a freezer, but the doctors said they’ll be perfectly okay in a couple of days. Hansol got a cut on his stomach, they’re just checking that it didn’t get infected because the blade was so dirty and rusty.”

“Oh, and Seokmin’s still unconscious,” Chan adds. “He was poisoned, but the doctors found an antidote easily. He’ll be okay too.”

Minghao is still confused. Why does none of the images in his head fit their story? He looks around again, at each of his friends in turn. He sees Sunyeong’s wrists, where there should be scars and bandages from having pulled out of the handcuffs. There isn’t a single mark on him.

“Jun-hyung... and Jihun-hyung...” Minghao stammers carefully.

“They went out to get us some coffee,” Seungkwan reveals. “Do you want anything? I’ll call them and ask.”

Seungkwan has barely reached for his phone when the door opens and Jihun and Junhui walk in with trays of coffee and sandwiches.

“You’re awake,” Jihun says happily, with a wide smile.

Junhui comes over, gives the tray to Jeonghan and takes his place on the chair next to the younger.

“Hey, little brother,” he says in soft Chinese. “You feeling any better?”

“It doesn’t make any sense, Jun-gē,” Minghao replies after a while of thinking. “What happened to us?”

“You don’t remember? Our house was stormed, you know the vacation house we were supposed to stay in? They came in with stun darts or something and knocked us all out. The next thing I know the police wakes me up in a bathtub in some concrete room. They told us we were kidnapped and put into some kind of sick game show, like survive-and-escape, but with each of us in a different room. It’s all so crazy.”

“You should see the hospital,” Jihun says to no one in particular. “It’s crawling with police to try and keep the reporters out. Manager-nim even had to ask our lovely Carats to leave because there were too many of them. There’s a whole room with flowers from them, and it’s in the parking lot too.”

Minghao thought about it. Slowly but surely the images in his head were fading, like how a dream slowly disappears after you wake up. “So... nobody... died?”

“What? No!” Seungkwan says.

“I don’t know if we could have died, but no, we’re all still here,” Mingyu finishes.

With those words, the last of Minghao’s worries go away. He lays back down, closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh. He must have imagined the whole thing when he was in the Small Room, drugged and hallucinating. He was so happy that it wasn’t true. And to the soft voices of his friends sharing coffee and eating, he fell asleep again.

This time he was safe. For real.

* * *

 

**AFTERMATH**

The hardest thing to come was the trial against Lee Hanryuk, Kook Kangho and Kim Yeongdong, who were found suspected of and guilty to kidnapping, imprisonment, attempted murder, threat, physiological and physical torture. Each of the thirteen members testified for their experiences in the Game House, as well as the hosts from their vacation home, and the witnesses who had led the police to the House in time.

It was a life sentence for all three of them. The members of the Performance Unit still can’t believe that all of this happened because they refused to record that old and dangerous game show two years ago.

As soon as everyone had been released from the hospital and recovered, they were sent away again. Some went home to their families to rest, others went on new vacations in groups. They kept their adoring and worried fans updated through social media and promised that they’d be back soon.

They kept their promise. Two months after the ordeal, the first fan meet with all thirteen members was set up. It was at this time, in the changing room before the meet was supposed to begin, that Minghao told his friends his story.

It moved them to tears, both the idea of how bad it could have been and that Minghao has been carrying this illusion with him alone all this time. Jisoo and Wonwoo gave him a warm, long hug, promising that they’d never ever leave without his permission. Seungcheol made an uplifting joke about an old childhood scar on his stomach, and how that might have been from the bullet he’s been shot within Minghao’s nightmares.

The producer called for them to get ready, they lined up backstage, and they gathered in a circle. With hands and rings together, they yelled their fighting chant and walked out into the bright spotlight of the stage.

Thousands of Carats greeted them with powerful voices and love. The thirteen members took their seats, the meet began, and Minghao smiled.

A few minutes later was the first time in a long time that he forgot completely about the kidnapping and the Rooms. And he was happy.

They beat the game.

 


End file.
